up2date for multiple servers

[Ed Wilts]

On Wed, Jan 11, 2006 at 02:17:18PM +0100, Anze wrote:
> I have a few (4) RH EL4 servers in the same LAN. Only one box is 
> configured to access the "outside" world.
> Since I need to update all of my servers (I do have subscriptions for 
> all 4 servers) I'm asking, how to setup this only server, that can 
> access the Internet, to only fetch the updates, and the other 3 servers 
> will get updates from there.
> I've allready set the server up to download the rpms. Now, how to 
> configure the other 3 servers to look for updates on that server? Maby 
> the implementing of yum would be better idea than up2date?

There are couple of approaches.  First, you can configure your 1 host to
be a proxy server (e.g. squid) for the rest of the servers.  Then have
it fetch the packages down and keep them.

Then:
# up2date -k <directory with rpms>

This communicates with RHN via the proxy server to see which packages
you need, installs them from the directory you've specified, and updates
RHN with the result.

Secondly, you could install the updates manually, via yum or whatever,
but then you lose a bunch of functionality that RHN gives you (for
example, a single web page showing you the status of all of your
systems).

Red Hat offers a proxy service that will work but frankly you're too
small to make this affordable/practical.

My personal approach (we're up to about 20 servers) is to configure the
squid proxy and just download all the patches invidually to each server
that needs them.  I've been too lazy to look up the squid to cache the
rpms on the squid server which would make some sense.  My current method
allows me to mix RHEL 3 and RHEL 4 systems at different revs and do the
right thing.

        .../Ed

-- 
Ed Wilts, RHCE
Mounds View, MN, USA
mailto:ewilts at ewilts.org
Member #1, Red Hat Community Ambassador Program