Updating: RHel 5.x baseline and tailored updates or intermediate baselines

Preliminary question: is this list still actually active?

The main question...

We need to decide a philosophy of RHEL installation and updating to 
achieve stability and uniformity across a group of machines.

The main question is about the baseline we should use for system 
deployment.  (In other words, to be able to say "This is what we roll 
out and maintain consistently across the machines.")


The two main options for establishing our baseline seem to be:

1.  Pick some arbitrary, but fixed, point in time to generate a frozen 
local repo based on the RHN repo at that time;

2.  Use an official RHEL 5.x release.

In favour of the first (our point-in-time, from RHN) is that the 
baseline will (at the point of freezing) be reasonably up-to-date; i.e. 
notional minimisation of both bugs and integration instability.

In favour of the second (official 5.x) is that such releases will have 
undergone more thorough integration testing.  (Put the other way: 
arbitrary point-in-time snapshots have a slightly higher risk of 
creeping instabilities, as bugfixes etc. have the potential to introduce 
new problems, including unforeseen interactions with other areas.)


Whichever we choose, we'll need to supplement this with a means to 
introduce (again from RHN) targeted, specific bugfixes for specific 
problems (e.g. security fixes) but I believe that is more or less 
independent of where we make the baseline for our systems.

So advice (or pointers to papers offering advice) on where to place the 
baseline (RHN or ISO) would be welcome.

If there is a more appropriate forum for this question, let me know.


-- 
: David Lee
: ECMWF (Data Handling System)
: Shinfield Park
: Reading  RG2 9AX
: Berkshire
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: tel:    +44-118-9499 362
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