Robinson Tiemuqinke wrote:
Continue to install machines with Centos 5.0(!!) distro (not 5.1, 5.2, etc snapshots|subreleases), But have .../centos/5/updates/{SRPMS|i386|x86_64}/ repositories|directories which contains updates since 5.0 to current level. This way I only need to feed yum with two repositories: centos/5.0/os/ and centos/5/updates/ -- some time will have local custom repos as well, but that is another totally different topic.
in that case you will need to find the updates in the 5.1/os/ repo as well and put it yourself into the updates/ directory, which will be a waste of time, network bandwidth and resources. You are going to be much better off just installing 5.1 from the future and using that.
For the machines you have 5.0 on, just run yum against the 5.1/os/ and 5.1/updates/ repo, and they will also move to 5.1. Note, the [os] repo also needs to be from 5.1 and not from 5.0 when you run the yum update on the 5.0 installed machines. other wise you *will* loose updates.
Currently I can not do it, because on Internet Centos Mirror Sites, the centos/{4,5}/updates/ are in fact symbolic links to centos/{4,5}.<latest_update_snapshot_release>/updates/ and contains update RPMS ONLY SINCE the relase date {4,5}.}.<latest_update_snapshot_release>. But what I like to have is a accumulated updates repository since {4,5}.0 release date.
you are trying to solve the wrong problem. I suggest you take a few minutes and work out exactly how the /5/ and /4/ symbolic links are handled on the mirror.centos.org network, and setup something similar for yourself as well.
Has any one done the above? If so, how is that working? or there is no need to do do it because there
I dont know how you install the machines, but i think its a fair guess that just reimaging the install process with new installer images for each point release, will be a lot less work than what you are doing at the moment.