Red Hat updates

[Erling Ringen Elvsrud]

On 9/17/08, Johan Booysen <johan at matrix-data.co.uk> wrote:
> I'm wondering what the general consensus is about applying Red Hat
> updates to production systems.

This presentation is useful:
http://stahnma.fedorapeople.org/summit/updates.odp

> Apart from the issue I've seen in the list where the update process
> replaces some people's config files, do you generally think it is safe
> to just apply updates and trust that nothing will be broken (broadly
> speaking)?

In my opinion no. Your patching approach depends on how critical
downtime of your systems are, security policies / how exposed the
systems are from possible threats, the resources you have available
(time / money), the amount of redundancy you have (cluster, patch one
leg at a time), etc. The presentation above may help you getting
started. RH has a whitepaper that also may be useful:

http://www.redhat.com/apps/webform.html?event_type=whitepaper&eid=341


Best regards,

Erling Ringen Elvsrud