Walkthrough: Setting up and managing an online patch catalog for Linux
This topic walks you through the process of setting up a patch catalog for a Red Hat Linux. It also explains how to set up a smart group that automatically selects a subset of the patches in the patch catalog.
This topic includes the following sections:
The video at right demonstrates the process of setting up a patch catalog for Linux.
Introduction
This topic is intended for system administrators who are tasked with managing patches. The goal of this topic is to demonstrate how to organize patch information by setting up a central location for storing metadata about a type of patch. BladeLogic calls these locations patch catalogs. By creating patch catalogs customized to your needs, it becomes easier to select the patches you want to evaluate on servers throughout your data center.
What is a patch catalog?
A patch catalog provides a place to store metadata about patches and the patch payloads themselves. Patch catalogs can be designed for specific needs. For example, a patch catalog can be used for a particular operating system, such as Red Hat Linux 6.0. With well designed patch catalogs, it is easier to select the patches that are used when evaluating the patch configuration of designated servers.
After you have created a patch catalog, you can create patch catalog smart groups, which can be dynamically populated with patches from the patch catalog that meet certain criteria. This smart group can be used as a filter during a Patching Job to determine whether patches in the group are missing on target servers.
What does this walkthrough show?
This walkthrough shows how to use the BSA Patch Catalog wizard to create a job that obtains patches from the Red Hat network.
The job sets up notifications for the administrator in charge of Linux patching if the Patch Catalog job should fail. The job is scheduled to run monthly to obtain the latest patches.
This walkthrough also shows how to set up a patch smart group that automatically selects patches from the patch group that are critical security advisories.
What do I need to do before I get started?
- For this walkthrough, you need various authorizations. You can log in and perform these tasks as BLAdmin, the BSA superuser, but BMC recommends a more restrictive approach to granting authorizations. Ideally, you should set up a role that is granted only the authorizations needed for patch management. To learn how to restrict access, see Walkthrough-Restricting-permissions-for-a-patching-administrator.
- You must have an account with the Red Hat Network from which you can obtain patch data.
- You must know which server you want to use as a patch repository.
How to set and manage a patch catalog for UNIX
| Step | Example screen |
---|---|---|
1 |
| |
2 |
| |
3 | Optionally, on this page you can set up a notification so the Patch Catalog Job sends an email if the job fails for some reason. Updating the patch catalog is an important task, so if there's a problem, someone will want to know about it.
| |
4 | Optionally, you can schedule a regular update to the Catalog Job, as described below. Scheduling is not essential because you can also trigger a Catalog Update Job manually. In production environments, however, BMC recommends that you schedule the job to ensure that a catalog always has the most recent patches.
| |
5 | Click Finish. | |
6 |
| |
7 | Create a patch smart group for security patches.
|
Wrapping it up
Congratulations. You have set up a job that creates a patch catalog for Red Hat Linux 6. The job will run monthly and obtain the latest patches from the Red Hat Network. If the job fails for any reason, an email notification is sent You have also learned how to create a patch catalog smart group so you can easily group all patches that are critical security advisories.
Where to go from here
Now that you have a serviceable patch catalog it is time to use it to test your Linux servers for patch compliance. See Walkthrough-Basic-Red-Hat-Linux-patch-analysis.