Re: create channel, exclude packages in dir.

On Mon, 21 Oct 2002, Brian K. Jones wrote:

> In most environments, this is probably not a big deal... let me explain
> my scenario:
> 
> We maintain a redhat mirror in our department.  My 'Current' server
> mounts the 'updates' directory located on the mirror (on a separate
> interface from the public one) ;-)  So when Redhat pushes out updates,
> it updates the directory pointed to by my current server.  I need to
> know how to deal with this.
> 
> Is there a way to somehow exclude packages that are located in the
> directory when I run 'create_channel' without changing the perms or
> removing the packages? (they need to stay put - it's a mirror!).  
> 
> An example:  I don't want my users running up2date, and upgrading to an
> incompatible version of up2date, but I can't change the permissions or
> remove the package.  I haven't run 'create_channel' yet to update what
> gets pushed out from the current server, so as of now, this isn't an
> issue.  But this sounds like problems to me, because what's going to
> happen when my current server, which thinks certain packages are there,
> tries to deliver them only to find that they're not - or they're not the
> same version as before?
> 
> Also, *is* there a way to accomplish the exclusion of packages from a
> channel while still having them in the channel directory?
> 
> Sorry if I missed this in the docs.  Links to RTFM on whatever I missed
> are more than welcome.

        The short answer is "no".  The medium answer is "the client
takes care of that".  Now for the long answer:

        The way Current is designed is to blindly suck in every RPM it
can find in the directories you tell it about, and sort through those to
get only the latest versions of a given package and serve them out.  As
Hunter said in a previous note, it may eb possible to add an exclude
list tot he server, but IMHO, that would be pretty pointless.  Why?
Simple - the client already has an exclude list available in the
/etc/sysconfig/rhn/up2date configuration file.  This also allows you to
specify different exclude lists on different client groups without
having to create and maintain multiple channels/trees on the server.
While I'll be the first to admit that the benefits of doing it this way
(client-centeric versus server centric) are debatable, we tried to go
with the way Red Hat does things as much as possible, which means
exclusion logic is in the client, not the server.

        I'm willing to entertain arguments / patches for moving that
server-side, but they'll have to be pretty good arguments or patches
that don't require any debugging on my part - Hunter may be more
amenable, you can ask him.

-- 
Thank you,
John Berninger

Systems Administrator		[email protected]
Department of Mathematics	Box 8205, Harrelson Hall
NC State University		Raleigh, NC 27695
Phone:  (919)515-6315		Fax:	(919)515-3798

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