[CentOS] "yum --security" and staying with 5.0

Wed Dec 12 15:41:49 UTC 2007
Karanbir Singh <mail-lists at karan.org>

All of this is good feedback, lets take this on board and see how we can 
make that text clearer!

Kai Schaetzl wrote:
> Karanbir Singh wrote on Wed, 12 Dec 2007 14:03:10 +0000:
> 
> As you see from quite a few inquiries over the last days that parapgraph is 
> *easily* misread. Don't take it personal ;-)
> Apart from those questions from people who didn't read it at all there a 
> several questions about the content that all go in the same direction or 
> simply don't understand it.
> 
>> you can still read the version from before my change - and even there it 
>> clearly states that you need to change yum configs etc to make changes 
>> to the repos your system sees.
> 
> No, it says "manually telling yum to do so" which could just mean "edit 
> that release file!" in this context. Beat me and others, but that's what we 
> read in it.
> 
> There is no mention or indication to 
>> anything requiring a change in the redhat-release file.
> 
> I just re-read the paragraph again carefully and I think it is the first 
> sentence that creates the confusion. It says "for a period of time next to 
> the latest version of the 5 series" one can wonder about a minute what this 
> really means) and then at the end it says "and you will not move to a newer 
> release without ...". This *seems* to indicate that if the release file 
> contains "5.1" yum is going to provide updates for 5.1 and stop with 
> updating when 5.2 comes out. And you would either have to set it to 5.2 or 
> 5 to continue with updating. Especially that "newer release" seems to 
> indicatethis.
> As I read it now what actually is going to happen is that upstream 
> *branches* beginning with 5.1 to 5.1.1, 5.1.2 etc. and they will keep 
> providing updates for 5.1.1, 5.1.2 and the "main" 5 stream until the main 
> stream support cycle ends. But this won't be determined of the release 
> file, it's only an indicator.

thats mostly correct, except for the fact that there will be only 3 
releases in any branch, so while /5/ will continue to be supported for 
the 7 years + that a EL version is, the 5.1 will only exist for 18 
months, after which, your machine is looking at orphan repos ( or maybe 
redhat will workout some cleaver way of bringing the machine back upto 
/5/ - which would be quite drastic and mostly a bad idea , since the 
package change set from 5.1 to 5.4 ( which is what /5/ will be at the 
time ) - could be quite large.


-- 
Karanbir Singh : http://www.karan.org/  : 2522219 at icq