[TriLUG] software update services for samba?

[Jeremy Portzer]

On Tue, 9 Sep 2003, Jim Ray wrote:

> My big beef with winders update or up2date for that matter is requiring an
> internet connection.  We all know that an internet connection is not always
> available.  What happens when we show up at a client site to do the updates
> and that internet connection is not available?

This is a big problem as more and more of these services become
Internet-focused.  Though just about everywhere has a functioning network,
it may not be feasible to have that network directly connected to the
Internet.

In the Red Hat Linux world, you have several possible alternatives.  If
you want to pay lots of $$, you can get the RHN satellite server from Red
Hat.  (Contact your friendly salesperson for details; it's definitely a
price thing).  I believe the satellite server can be "loaded" in various
ways, though some Internet connection would make it easier than others.

If you don't want to pay money, check out the Current server, a clone of
RHN that provides the basic updating service for up2date.  The url is
http://current.tigris.org/ ; this project is run by a TriLUG member
(Hunter Matthews) -- thanks Hunter!  In addition to Current, you can make
servers for urpmi (Mandrake), apt-get (Debian as well as Red
Hat/Mandrake), and yum (Red Hat/Mandrake/YellowDog).  While you would need
to populate these servers from the Internet somehow, the actual operation
doesn't require a live connection.  All of these clients can be scripted, 
via cron or similar mechanism, to apply updates regularly.  (Yum is 
particularly well designed for this).

--Jeremy

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