When facilitating OS updates for the end user there needs to be an action of the 

end user to update. One possibility is to put updates on the corporate intranet 

and notify users to fetch and install them. This process can lead to clients with a 

varied status, some up to date and some out of date. 

In both cases a mechanism has to be put in place that forces critical updates and 

patches. This can be an administrator running a script centrally, which contacts 

all clients remotely and forces an update using either the automated facility 

(casing it to run  now  instead of once a week) or the facilitated fetch and install 

method. This mechanism is needed in case of severe security problems where 

patches need to be applied immediately.

A typical Linux distribution consists of a lot of parts that all have independent 

updates. This means that there can be many different states of a client. Certainly 

a lot more than under Windows, which generally jumps with service packs (even 

Windows updates are generally small service packs and include changes for 

multiple parts of the OS). To be able to administrate a larger pool of Linux clients 

it is important to keep all at more or less the same level and version. This means 

that the automated update process is preferred over the end user driven process.

Most distributions have tools to do this update automatically. Examples are:

Red Hat Network (up2date) tools on Red Hat; see  Administration of Red Hat 

Desktop  on page 73

YaST online Update (YoU) on Suse

Red Carpet on Novell; see  Administration of Novell Linux Desktop  on 

page 74

OSS alternative update management applications include apt and yum.

Planning tip:

 Automate operating system updates and patching to keep all 

clients at the same level.

4.5.2  Application updates

If the application is included with and maintained as part of the distribution then 

the tools mentioned in the previous section can be used.

When the application is not part of the distribution there are several ways to 

approach the update:

Use scripts to fetch updated files and configurations from a network server.

For third party applications, an update executable or script might be provided.

Build a package that can be handled by OSS tools like apt and yum.

 Chapter 4. Technical planning 

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