Apparent lack of recent updates with CentOS 5.5

deisner · Post by **deisner** » 2011/03/03 16:19:32

There have been no updates recently (for almost two months) on any of my CentOS 5.5 boxes when I run 'yum check-update'. I may be misunderstanding the repo setup, but looking at the file mod dates, it seems that there hasn't been an update since 2011-01-06:

http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5.5/updates/i386/RPMS/

Meanwhile, a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor has had multiple security and bug fixes since then:

https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/rhel-server-errata.html

Is CentOS 5.5 still getting updated, or am I missing something (quite possible).

Thanks.

-David

gerald_clark · Post by **gerald_clark** » 2011/03/03 16:22:51

Welcome to CentOS.
New users need to read:
http://www.centos.org/modules/newbb/viewforum.php?forum=47

This has been answered several times.
Further updates for V5 are or will be to 5.6 when it is released.

deisner · Post by **deisner** » 2011/03/03 16:54:37

I actually did read all of those before posting my question. I also looked through the FAQs (General and CentOS5-specific) and still don't see anything. And I searched the forum for "updates".

I'm not saying the information is not there, but if it is, it's not easy to find.

Maybe the CentOS 5 FAQ should have a question like, "Why have there been no recent updates for CentOS 5?"

On a related note, I have been using CentOS for quite some time, and I don't recall there being a situation like this: two months with no updates (security or otherwise) available. Is this an unusual situation, or is this what to expect going forward? If so, what has changed about the CentOS project that's leading to this kind of delay?

Thanks.

deisner · Post by **deisner** » 2011/03/03 17:26:34

To answer my own question, this is a decent summary of the situation:

http://lwn.net/Articles/429364/

-David

pschaff · Post by **pschaff** » 2011/03/03 18:42:40

There is a [url=http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-devel/2011-March/007039.html]stated intent[/url] to put out some critical 5.5 updates in advance of 5.6:

[quote]
Subject: [CentOS-devel] Updates from today
Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2011 16:28:18 -0600
From: Karanbir Singh
Reply-To: The CentOS developers mailing list.
To: The CentOS developers mailing list.

hi guys,

EL5 got a bunch of updates that really need to make it out asap, and
while 4.9 settles down - the thinking is to get them released into the
5.5/updates repo. I'll have an exact list of what all is going to make
it in the day tomorrow, along with the packages.

- KB[/quote]

deisner · Post by **deisner** » 2011/03/03 20:19:38

That's good news. Thanks for pointing this out.

familyguy · Post by **familyguy** » 2011/03/04 16:18:36

[quote]
deisner wrote:
To answer my own question, this is a decent summary of the situation:

http://lwn.net/Articles/429364/

-David[/quote]

That article is spot on. I don't often follow these forums regularly anymore so I missed the "call for help," but I'd by lying if I said the lack of updates wasn't a problem. I lobbied hard to eject RHEL from our datacenters in favor of CentOS and I was only able to pull that off because of the published "goal" of several weeks delay in point releases (not several months) and a few days delay in security updates. Now I'm on the hotseat with a bunch of do-nothing PHB's who would LOVE nothing better than to gather budget and resources to implement a more "security compliant" solution like RHEL or Oracle's "unbreakable" Linux. That would cost the company more money and make my life more difficult, but it's hard for me to argue about the potential for trouble due to these delays in publishing security updates.

I also found it troubling when I was catching up on the groups and saw people heckling a long-time community contributor like Dag Wieers for having the temerity to ask for more visibility into what's going on.

What can us non-hacker types do to improve things?

Best,

pschaff · Post by **pschaff** » 2011/03/04 19:09:26

About the best I can suggest it to voice your concerns calmly and politely on venues where the developers hang out - primarily IRC and the mailing lists - and not the fora. Dag has consistently been a strong voice for more open and robust procedures and development environment, but sometimes the way he says things is counterproductive.

For 5.5/5.6 and 6.0 nothing substantial is likely to change, but hopefully there will be future opportunities to help out with finding and checking for trademark and image issues in RPMS, and perhaps more openness in the development and testing processes. I believe the QA team (which needs real-world testers more than hackers) should be expanded, but no call has gone out for volunteers in quite a long time. I would (and do) also argue for an open Alpha/Beta process like SL, rather than the tightly closed current QA process.

As far as the PHBs - if they do insist on a commercially supported environment, I'd surely try to steer them toward RHEL and away from Oracle. CentOS and other rebuilds could not exist without RHEL. They would do just fine, and probably better, without Oracle Linux.

familyguy · Post by **familyguy** » 2011/03/04 22:18:38

[quote]
About the best I can suggest it to voice your concerns calmly and politely on venues where the developers hang out - primarily IRC and the mailing lists - and not the fora. Dag has consistently been a strong voice for more open and robust procedures and development environment, but sometimes the way he says things is counterproductive.
[/quote]
I'll agree that Dag can sometimes sound prickly, but he's got a very valid point. Hopefully, my message was suitably calm and polite. The current situation isn't sustainable so I hope some changes are made going forward.

[quote]
As far as the PHBs - if they do insist on a commercially supported environment, I'd surely try to steer them toward RHEL and away from Oracle. CentOS and other rebuilds could not exist without RHEL. They would do just fine, and probably better, without Oracle Linux.
[/quote]
I agree completely. God knows what backhanded deal is going on in PHB-land, but being stuck with Oracle licensing and support would be a major step backwards.

Best,

pschaff · Post by **pschaff** » 2011/03/04 22:22:40

[quote]
familyguy wrote:
...
I'll agree that Dag can sometimes sound prickly, but he's got a very valid point.[/quote]
I seldom disagree with Dag's points.

[quote]
Hopefully, my message was suitably calm and polite.[/quote]
It was indeed, in stark contrast to many recent Social posts.

Cheers. :pint:

CentOS