Who You Are, and Why and How You Should Read This Book

This book is designed for experienced and budding Linux administrators. Patch management is a critical Linux administration skill. This book can help you manage patches on individual Linux systems and can help you manage patches on networks of Linux computers.

With these skills, you can keep your Linux systems up to date with the latest security, feature, and bug updates. You can keep a network of Linux systems up to date in this way with a minimum load on your Internet connection.

If your experience is limited to one or two Linux computers, this book can help you think beyond them to network management and what you will need to do in the workforce for a large group of Linux systems.

You can use this book to evaluate the patch-management features associated with several different distributions. The more patch management tools you know, the more you can do to maintain different Linux distributions on your network. For a general overview of patch management clients, read Chapter 1, "Patch Management Systems."

If you're evaluating patch management using the Red Hat Network and the associated Proxy Server, read Chapter 2, "Consolidating Patches on a Red Hat/Fedora Network." If you're evaluating patch management using the YaST Online Update Server or Zenworks Linux Management, read Chapter 3, "SUSE's Update Systems and rsync Mirrors." You'll also find information on how you can use rsync to mirror repositories from most all Linux distributions.

If you're evaluating patch management on Debian Linux systems, read Chapter 4, "Making apt Work for You." As Knoppix and Ubuntu are built on Debian, the same tools can help you manage systems associated with those distributions, as well. You'll learn how to create a Debian repository on your own network.

If you prefer the apt patch management commands associated with Debian Linux, you can also use them on many RPM-based distributions. If that is what you want, read Chapter 5, "Configuring apt for RPM Distributions." That chapter will show you how to create an apt-based repository for a RPM-based distribution on your own network.

If you prefer the affinity of yum for RPM-based distributions, read Chapters 6 and 7. Chapter 6, "Configuring a yum Client," details how you can use yum to keep your systems up to date. Chapter 7, "Setting Up a yum Repository," details how you can create yum repositories on your own network.