Keeping Red Hat Up2date with yum

jleveille writes “Updating our operating systems is part of keeping them secure and running properly. Red Hat provides us with a tool to do this through the Red Hat Network called up2date, which is available via subscription. As a home or business user this is available as a demo, free for 60 days and can be extended after that provided you fill out a simple survey. Basic subscriptions then start at $60 a year.

Up2date is good but has drawbacks. The first is the availability of the server when heavy updates happen or new distributions are released and the network is heavily loaded. This happened just recently with the openssh and sendmail security patches needed this week, I attempted to connect to rhn to update my Red Hat 7.1 server of which I have a paid subscription, time outs, not what I want when I need to patch machines as I see exploits discussed on mailing lists.

Enter yum, the Yellow Dog Updater, Modified…

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