Issues with updating using offline repositories for RHEL 6.4 - 6.9
Hello,
I'm managing a bunch of RHEL workstations in an offline network. We have a server running repositories for Base, Updates, and EPEL.
I'm in the process of updating a few hundred systems running 6.4, updating them to 6.9 (don't laugh, these are the cards I've been dealt with!), and a fairly high percentage of them are failing the updates, maybe 1 out of 5 or 1 out of 6 can't successfully complete a full update. For the ones that fail, they get about 10 updates in (out of anywhere from 500 - 1000 needed updates) and the system freezes. When I go to the machine to physically look at it, there's usually something about a kernel panic on the screen, and it'll require a hard system reboot with the power button, to get it back up again.
Is it likely this is just too much of an upgrade at once? Is the leap from 6.4 to 6.9 just too big of a jump?
Responses
Hi Paul,
I assumed that you wanted to hear something else - but I think good support should be based on truth.
Well, upgrading by leaving out minor versions leads to more or less serious problems in nearly all cases.
Also, switching to RHEL 7 is a very good idea, it includes many improvements since the RHEL 6 edition.
Cheers :)
Christian
I've brought some systems from rhel 6.2 to 6.9 after they were "discovered" at one customer site. In that case, those systems did okay with the upgrade.
Occasionally one may have an issue with a few rpms, and I've had to either do "--skip-broken" or update what is possible in serial and not in parallel, then observe the remaining things that failed to resolve them individually.
I concur with Christian that RHEL 7 ought to be considered, but that being said, (in the case of a failed rpm, or rpms) one method I have used (not always) to do one update at a time and this will obviously bail on any that fail...
There are ways to deal with rpms that fail for a flat yum update, for instance, examine orphaned/out of date repositories under /etc/yum.repos.d/ directory. Disable orphaned/out of date repositories.
NOTE: The below method should be treated with caution, not used reflexively, examine the output of the failed yum update and see if the rpm that fails is something significant or not.
yum check-update | egrep -v 'Loaded|Uploading' | perl -ne 'print;chomp;system("echo yum update $_")'
Some systems (depending on their level of configuration paranoia) may be set to "panic" if audit is turned off. You could temporarily turn off auditing in such systems, but be aware of what triggers will occur and inform necessary parties and/or take proper precautions (like set panic to off temporarily and reboot, some audit configs won't take until after a reboot, depending on the configuration paranoia). I've taken systems from 6.2 to 6.9, but there were a few that required "special handling". You can increase the number of audit events that are acceptable, see this doc. Mercifully, we're able to patch pretty consistently.
Regards,
RJ
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