Perl net-SSLeay 1.35 from 2008 only version available in repositories

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Working with EPIC on implementing their EMR in our hospital. Perl Net-SSLeay 1.43+ is required by a component of it. Can only find version 1.35-9 on the RHEL repos while there is a versions 1.66 available from here: http://search.cpan.org/~mikem/Net-SSLeay-1.66/ ; We can install from the site directly but that may cause support issues.

Is there any reason why RHEL only has the install from 2008 in their repositories?

NZ
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PS Guru 6494 points
11 September 2014 12:32 AM

Which version of RHEL are you working with?

The way RHEL is packaged, a major version is chosen at time of distribution release and this major version is then distributed and supported for the life of the distribution including the backporting of errata to this version. It is highly likely (and not at all unexpected) that the latest version of the software is not shipped with the RHEL version you are using, unless you are using an extremely recent RHEL release (eg. 7 that was just released only has 1.55).

Depending on Red Hat's stance on the package, you may be able to request its inclusion in the Red Hat Software Collection repositories.
https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Software_Collections/1/html/1.1_Release_Notes/

Your other option is to package it yourself.

If the vendor has stated they support RHEL (version X) as a platform, a question should go back to them asking why they are using (or requesting) a newer version than the distribution's library.

NZ Newbie 15 points
11 September 2014 1:59 AM

We are on RHEL 6.5.

I've created a bug report based on a chat that I had with a RHEL support rep but I don't know if anything will come of it. Packaging it myself sounds like it is the same thing as simply installing it, we would not having support from RHEL on a production server. There are actually some CentOS repos that have newer versions but it still goes back to the support issue.

Here is the bugzilla report I made, in case interested: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1140418

PS Guru 6494 points
11 September 2014 2:44 AM

The RHEL packages version was last updated December 2012. I would expect CentOS repos to have the same version as CentOS is a downstream build of Red Hat.

The benefit of packaging the software is that it is more easily managed / deployed with infrastructure such as Satellite / Puppet.

Running a locally packaged version of the Perl library shouldn't affect your Red Hat support for the rest of the OS, just the component you are replacing (this can/should be clarified with Red Hat support in writing).

I am not sure how much traction you will get with your Bugzilla. You may well be in a situation (without looking at the source/package) that the newer versions of the library depend on SSL library versions that don't ship with RHEL 6.x.

NZ Newbie 15 points
11 September 2014 3:03 AM

Ok, so the CentOS repo was a bit of a mistake, a coworker sent me an email but after a closer look I realized he was searching the RHEL 7 repositories. I have a feeling we will probably just go with installing it after a quick call to verify that everything else will be supported. Thanks for your help and quick responses, pretty new to RHEL in our environment so this helps to clarify a bit. If anything comes from the bugzilla thing I will post an update here. You are probably right though; it should be the vendor's responsibility if they are the one who are saying a platform is supported despite them not supporting a specific version of a component.

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