[rhn-users] why isn't rhn failover tested? was Re: RHEL4.6 up2date failure with trailing ";"

[Daryl Herzmann]

Good day,

Working with Red Hat, the bug for this issue was found and we are thankful 
for that, but am really at a lose as to why this doesn't warrant an errata 
push to fix this for others that have found it as well.

Moreover, reviewing the support of RHN failover in the recent releases we 
find:

RHEL 5.0  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=232567
   - Was not supported out of the box.  We asked Red Hat for a solution
     , but they waited till RHEL 5.1 to fix it.

RHEL 5.1 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=378911
   - Appears to have some bug which would cause failover to never be
     attempted.  I am not positive on the exact details of this bug.

RHEL 4.6  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=385161
   - Was broken out of the box, which means it was not tested at Red Hat
     and now it seems a fix for others will not arrive till RHEL 4.7

What is the deal?  Why don't bugs in rhn failover warrant immediate fixes?

Going beyond this, will Red Hat test rhn failover in RHEL 5.2 and RHEL 4.7 
?  If not, maybe we shouldn't have our boxes setup to do so after all of 
this mess with the last two major releases :(

Some clarity on the support for RHN failover would be appreciated.

daryl


On Thu, 15 Nov 2007, Daryl Herzmann wrote:

> Greetings,
>
> We have our RHEL4 systems deployed with the failover functionality setup 
> where clients first hit our RHN proxy, but then go to RHN hosted if something 
> happens to the proxy.
>
> The version of up2date released today in RHEL4.6 perhaps contains a bug 
> whereby if the noSSLServerURL, serverURL, and sslCACert config settings 
> contain a trailing ";", up2date will bomb out.
>
> We face a major problem since when our users update their systems, the newly 
> install up2date will cause subsequent updates to fail.  Effectively requiring 
> manual intervention.
>
> I bugzilla'd this:
>
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=385161
>
> Anybody have any comments about this?  The client config docs suggest the use 
> of the trailing ";"
>
> https://rhn.redhat.com/rhn/help/client-config/rhn500/en/s1-latest-clients-configuring.jsp#s2-client-config-failover
>
> Anybody else having troubles?
>
> thanks!
>  daryl
>

-- 
/**
  * Daryl Herzmann, RHCE
  * Assistant Scientist -- Iowa Environmental Mesonet
  * http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu
  */