Linux Patch Management Keeping Linux Systems Up To Date

by Jang, Michael

• ISBN13: 9780132366755
• ISBN10: 0132366754
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-01-09
• Publisher: Prentice Hall

Summary

This book will guide you through managing patches and updates on one Linux computer or networks of Linux computers.

Author Biography

Michael Jang holds RHCE, SAIR Linux Certified Professional, CompTIA Linux+ Professional, and MCP certifications, and has written books on four Linux certifications. Specializing in networks and operating systems, he has two more books coming soon: Linux Annoyances for Geeks (O’Reilly, 2006) and Mastering Red Hat Fedora Linux 5 (Sybex, 2006).

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

About the Author	xiii
Preface	xv
Acknowledgments	xxi
1 Patch Management Systems	1	(42)
1.1 Basic Patch Concepts	1	(9)
1.1.1 What Is a Patch?	1	(3)
1.1.2 Patch Sources	4	(2)
1.1.3 Patch Testing	6	(4)
1.2 Distribution-Specific Repositories	10	(24)
1.2.1 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Updates	10	(15)
1.2.2 Noyell/SUSE	25	(6)
1.2.3 Debian	31	(3)
1.2.4 Other Linux Distributions	34	(1)
1.3 Community-Based Sources	34	(3)
1.3.1 Fedora Linux	35	(1)
1.3.2 Red Hat Rebuilds	36	(1)
1.4 Configuring Your LAN	37	(5)
1.4.1 Linux Patch Management in a Network	38	(1)
1.4.2 Rigorous Hardware Requirements	39	(1)
1.4.3 Source Packages	40	(1)
1.4.4 More Than One Repository	41	(1)
1.4.5 Keeping Your Repository Updated	41	(1)
1.5 Summary	42	(1)
2 Consolidating Patches on a Red Hat/Fedora Network	43	(36)
2.1 Creating Your Own Fedora Repository	43	(9)
2.1.1 Installation Requirements	44	(6)
2.1.2 Creating a Repository	50	(2)
2.2 Configuring a Red Hat Network Proxy	52	(21)
2.2.1 Configuring the Proxy Server	52	(17)
2.2.2 Configuring the Proxy Client	69	(4)
2.3 Configuring Red Hat Rebuilds	73	(5)
2.3.1 CentOS	74	(3)
2.3.2 Lineox	77	(1)
2.3.3 Other Rebuilds	77	(1)
2.4 Summary	78	(1)
3 SUSE's Update Systems and rsync Mirrors	79	(36)
3.1 The YaST Update System	80	(17)
3.1.1 The YaST Package Manager	81	(3)
3.1.2 Change Source of Installation	84	(2)
3.1.3 Installation Into Directory	86	(1)
3.1.4 Patch CD Update	87	(1)
3.1.5 System Update	87	(3)
3.1.6 UML Installation	90	(1)
3.1.7 YOU Server Configuration	90	(3)
3.1.8 A Local YaST Online Update	93	(4)
3.2 Configuring YaST Patch Management for a LAN	97	(8)
3.2.1 Creating a Local Mirror with YaST Online Update Server	97	(2)
3.2.2 Creating a Local Mirror with rsync	99	(6)
3.3 ZENworks Linux Management	105	(8)
3.3.1 Supported Clients and Servers	106	(1)
3.3.2 Installing the ZLM Server	106	(1)
3.3.3 Configuring the Web interface	107	(1)
3.3.4 Configuring Administrators	108	(1)
3.3.5 Adding Clients	108	(2)
3.3.6 Setting Up Activations	110	(1)
3.3.7 Creating Groups	110	(1)
3.3.8 Configuring Channels	111	(1)
3.3.9 Creating Transactions	112	(1)
3.4 Summary	113	(2)
4 Making apt Work for You	115	(36)
4.1 Fundamentals of apt	115	(25)
4.1.1 Installing apt on a Debian-Based Distribution	115	(2)
4.1.2 Installing apt on a RPM-Based Distribution	117	(1)
4.1.3 Configuring apt on Your Computer	117	(3)
4.1.4 The Basic apt Commands	120	(4)
4.1.5 The aptitude System	124	(8)
4.1.6 Running the Synaptic Package Manager	132	(8)
4.2 Creating Your apt Repository	140	(10)
4.2.1 Debian Repository Mirror Options	140	(1)
4.2.2 A Complete Debian Repository	141	(3)
4.2.3 Creating a Debian Mirror	144	(6)
4.3 Summary	150	(1)
5 Configuring apt for RPM Distributions	151	(28)
5.1 A History of apt for RPM	152	(3)
5.1.1 Reduced Dependency Trouble	152	(1)
5.1.2 The Conectiva Approach	152	(2)
5.1.3 An Overview of apt for RPM-Based Distributions	154	(1)
5.2 Configuring apt for RPM	155	(13)
5.2.1 Package Options	155	(1)
5.2.2 Configuring apt	156	(1)
5.2.3 Selecting Sources	156	(1)
5.2.4 Configuring apt for Fedora Linux	157	(4)
5.2.5 Configuring apt for SUSE Linux	161	(4)
5.2.6 Configuring apt for a Red Hat Rebuild	165	(3)
5.3 Setting Up a Local Repository	168	(5)
5.3.1 Mirroring a Remote Repository	168	(2)
5.3.2 Creating an apt Repository	170	(3)
5.4 The apt Commands in Detail	173	(4)
5.4.1 Analyzing apt-cache in Detail	173	(2)
5.4.2 Analyzing apt-get in Detail	175	(2)
5.4.3 Debian-Only apt Commands	177	(1)
5.4.4 RPM-Only apt Commands	177	(1)
5.5 Summary	177	(2)
6 Configuring a yum Client	179	(40)
6.1 The Basic yum Process	180	(1)
6.1.1 Yellow Dog and yum	180	(1)
6.1.2 yup and yum	180	(1)
6.1.3 Repositories and Headers	181	(1)
6.1.4 Required yum Packages	181	(1)
6.2 Sample yum Clients	181	(15)
6.2.1 Fedora	182	(8)
6.2.2 Red Hat Enterprise Linux	190	(3)
6.2.3 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Rebuilds	193	(3)
6.3 Special yum Commands	196	(11)
6.3.1 Caching Available Packages by yum	196	(1)
6.3.2 Checking Available Updates by yum	197	(1)
6.3.3 Finding a Needed File	197	(1)
6.3.4 Identifying a Needed Package	198	(1)
6.3.5 Listing Available Packages	198	(2)
6.3.6 Getting More Information	200	(1)
6.3.7 Updates or Installations by yum	200	(1)
6.3.8 Deletions by yum	201	(1)
6.3.9 Cleaning yum Caches	202	(1)
6.3.10 Group Management by yum	203	(2)
6.3.11 The yum Command Options	205	(2)
6.4 Configuring Automatic Updates	207	(3)
6.4.1 Finding the Right Update Command	207	(1)
6.4.2 Automating the Process	208	(1)
6.4.3 Other Automated Updates	209	(1)
6.5 A yum GUI Tool	210	(6)
6.5.1 Basic Configuration	211	(1)
6.5.2 Adding More Repositories	212	(1)
6.5.3 Installing Packages	213	(1)
6.5.4 Updating Packages	214	(1)
6.5.5 Removing Packages	215	(1)
6.5.6 Using Your Own Commands	215	(1)
6.6 Summary	216	(3)
7 Setting Up a yum Repository	219	(34)
7.1 Getting the Packages	220	(6)
7.1.1 Strategy	220	(1)
7.1.2 Creating a yum Directory Tree	221	(1)
7.1.3 Start with a Distribution	222	(1)
7.1.4 Installing yum	223	(1)
7.1.5 Synchronizing Updates	224	(2)
7.2 Managing Headers	226	(3)
7.2.1 Header Creation Commands	226	(1)
7.2.2 Adding the Headers	227	(2)
7.3 Configuring a Local yum Server	229	(8)
7.3.1 Configuring an FTP yum Server	230	(3)
7.3.2 Configuring a yum Client for an FTP-Based yum Repository	233	(1)
7.3.3 Configuring an NFS yum Server	233	(2)
7.3.4 Configuring an NFS yum Client	235	(2)
7.4 Adding Other Repositories	237	(4)
7.4.1 Using Distribution Installation Files	237	(1)
7.4.2 Keeping Extras with yum	237	(2)
7.4.3 Adding Development Repositories	239	(1)
7.4.4 Other Distribution Repositories	240	(1)
7.4.5 Third-Party Repositories	241	(1)
7.5 Maintaining the Repository	241	(1)
7.5.1 Updating Packages	241	(1)
7.5.2 Cleaning Header Information	242	(1)
7.6 Creating an Enterprise Repository	242	(9)
7.6.1 Creating a RHEL Update Repository	243	(5)
7.6.2 Yummifying the RHEL Update Repository	248	(1)
7.6.3 Sharing the RHEL Repository	248	(2)
7.6.4 Configuring Updates to the RHEL Repository	250	(1)
7.6.5 Configuring Clients to Use the RHEL Repository	251	(1)
7.7 Summary	251	(2)
Index	253

Excerpts

Preface Preface Welcome toLinux Patch Management! This is the book that can guide you through managing patches and updates on one Linux computer or networks of Linux computers. What This Book Is About It's important to keep Linux computers up to date. Linux developers are constantly updating key services to enhance security, add features you need, fix bugs that hinder your productivity and the productivity of your users, and help your systems to work more efficiently. These updates are known as patches. Most Linux distributions make gigabytes of patches available over the Internet. These updates cannot help you unless you know how to manage patches for the different Linux systems on your network. This book assumes you have some sort of high-speed Internet connection that can help you download these patches. You may need to download hundreds of megabytes of patches, and that is not realistic on a 56Kbps telephone modem. If you have to download hundreds of megabytes on all the Linux computers in your office, you might overload all but the fastest business-quality high-speed connections. In this book, I describe how you can manage patches on Red Hat/Fedora, SUSE, and Debian Linux systems. While Red Hat and SUSE have developed specialized update tools for their distributions, it's also possible to use community tools, such as apt and yum, on many Linux distributions. To this end, you can use this book as a guide to managing patches on the noted distributions. In addition, you can use apt and yum on a number of other Linux systems. As a Linux administrator, you can use this book to learn to manage the hundreds of megabytes, or even gigabytes, of patches on a wide variety of Linux systems. After you learn to manage patches on individual Linux systems, you can extend those skills to managing a group of Linux computers on a network. If you have a sufficient number of Linux systems, you may even want to build your own patch management repositories. Patches on one or two Linux computers may work well with a standard high-speed Internet connection. If you have a substantial number of Linux computers, you might download the patches from each of these computers over the Internet. To keep these downloads from overloading your Internet connection, you can pay a premium for an even higher-speed connection. Alternatively, you can use the techniques described in this book to configure a local patch management repository. This can help you avoid buying a faster high-speed Internet connection.Thus, a patch management repository can help you save a lot of money. In addition, you can update a group of computers more quickly when you download patches from a local repository. Red Hat supports patch management on a group of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) computers through the Red Hat Network. SUSE supports patch management on a group of SUSE Enterprise Linux Server and Workstation computers with YaST Online Update and Zenworks Linux Management. You can use these tools to manage patches on individual systems or on networks of these distributions. Red Hat and SUSE provide these tools to help you manage patches. If you have a large number of systems, these tools can help you keep the loads on your Internet connection to a minimum and speed up the updates you need. But this book is not limited to Red Hat and SUSE Linux. It also can help you keep the loads on your Internet connection to a minimum when managing other distributions, including Debian and Fedora Linux. It also uses the tools designed by Conectiva (now Mandriva) for RPM-based distributions. The skills you learn can help you manage patches on allied distributions, including Yellowdog, Ubuntu, Progeny, Lycoris, and the "rebuild" distributions that use the source code released for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. What You Need to Know Before Rea