[CentOS] More questions about patch management

Tue Jan 31 03:31:53 UTC 2006
Johnny Hughes <mailing-lists at hughesjr.com>

On Mon, 2006-01-30 at 21:22 -0600, Johnny Hughes wrote:
> On Mon, 2006-01-30 at 20:56 -0600, Steve Bergman wrote:
> > My original understanding was that only security patches get issued
> > between quarterly  releases.  But that then the distro gets updated with
> > bug fixes 2 to 4 times per year.
> > 
> > I may be getting this all wrong, but I get the impression that there are
> > 3-4 month periods of quiescence punctuated by short periods (or a day?)
> > of significantly more intensive patching.
> > 
> > Is that correct?  
> > 
> 
> That is generally correct ... the upstream provider generally releases
> security patches between the update set releases.  They generally
> release bugfix and enhancement updates during an update set (or as we
> call it a point release).
> 
> They also generally release an update set at 3-4 month intervals.
> 
> The update sets contain both security, bufix, and enchantment updates
> though ... and normally many of the new enhancement and bugfix updates
> are required as dependencies for the security updates.
> 
> All of these things are general though ... to see exactly what updates
> were released and when, look here (for the upstream EL4 product):

OK ... I don't know what happened as I pasted a link in here .. here it
is again:

https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/rhel4as-errata.html


> 
> You can see every update and the date it was released ... you can also
> see the update set dates of:
> 
> Release =  2005-02-14
> 
> update1 =  2005-06-09
> 
> update2 =  2005-10-05
> 
> (this is about 4 months between release sets)
> 
> You can also see that there were:
> 
> 27 day zero updates on 02-15-2005, 3 bugfix updates between release
> update1, 3 security updates as part of update1, 0 bugfix updates between
> update1 and update2, 11 security updates as part of update2, 5
> bugfix/enhancement updates between update2 and now.
> 
> We at CentOS release the updates that are released upstream ... when
> they are released upstream ... we do so regardless of whether they are
> bugfix or security or enhancement updates ... because, they were
> released when they were for a reason :)
> 
> Some other rebuild distros ONLY release security updates between update
> sets ... others release hardly any updates at all.  We personally think
> the the upstream provider is the absolute best enterprise distro in the
> world, and that they are smart enough to release the updates that they
> want when they want them released, therefore, we release the same
> packages too.
> _______________________________________________

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20060130/ef15e87f/attachment-0005.sig>