RE: Download of RH3 updates from a RH4 server

[Dag Wieers <dag wieers com>]

On Tue, 30 May 2006, Mimmus wrote:

> > Did you read _all_ the notes in that document concerning 
> > using a single systemid ?
> I suppose...
> 
> I'm trying to explain better:
> I have ONE subscription to RHN AS and I'd like to use it to download updates
> for both AS3 and AS4 (possibly AS4-x86_64 too... but this is another
> issue...)

If it's an AS/i386 subscription x86_64 is out of the question.


> This is my yam.conf:
> 
> [main]
> srcdir = /var/yam
> wwwdir = /var/www/yam
> arch = i386
> rhnlogin = yyyyyyyyyy:xxxxxxxxxx
> 
> [rhel4as]
> name = Red Hat Advanced Server $release U1 ($arch)
> release = 4
> rhnrelease = 4AS
> metadata = yum createrepo
> arch = i386 i586 i686 x86_64
> iso = rhel$release-u1-$arch-as-dvd.iso
> updates = rhn:///rhel-$arch-as-$release
> 
> [rhel3as]
> name = Red Hat Advanced Server $release U4 ($arch)
> release = 3
> rhnrelease = 3AS
> arch = i386 i586 i686
> metadata = yum createrepo
> iso = rhel$release-u4-$arch-as-dvd.iso
> updates = rhn:///rhel-$arch-as-$release
> 
> I DELETED my system subscription from RHN, RE-REGISTERED system (running
> RH4AS) to RHN, copied systemid to /var/yam/rhel3-as-i386 and tried to run
> 'yam -uxqg -d rhel3as'. Nope.
> I needed to alter channel subscription for this system from RHN (setting to
> nothing), then Yam worked.
> If I need to revert to rhel4as, I need to alter again channel subscription
> from RHN.

Well, there are issues with using a single systemid. That's a fact :)
README.rhn actually tries to persuade you to not do it.

One of the issues is that you have to run yam for each distribution 
seperately otherwise the up2date global variables mess up and you'll 
effectively have the channel subscription poisoning.

You can try the latest version from subversion, but I can't remember a 
fixed an issue like you're describing. You also might want to use 
gensystemid to create the systemid file instead of using the up2date 
register process.

If it doesn't work it might be something Yam is not taking care of 
properly, but the up2date code is very hard to understand and there's 
almost no information about the XMLRPC methods.

That said, it works fine with 1 systemid per dist/arch and the gensystemid 
tool makes it easy to manage the different systemids.


> P.S. I'm looking also for detailed instructions for using Yam for PXE/TFTP
> remote installations...

Yam only generates the /tftpboot/yam directory and pxelinux copies. You 
still have to populate it yourself like you would do without Yam. I'd like 
to work on footprint (a tool that manages kickstart files, pxeconfig 
etc...) but currently no time for that.

Kind regards,
--   dag wieers,  dag wieers com,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
[all I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power]