Red Hat Linux DocumentationRed Hat Linux Documentation
To keep your system working properly and, more importantly, secure from hackers, you should keep it up to date with the patches available from Red Hat. UCI currently has the updates for v6.0 and v6.1 available from ftp.uci.edu. Here's a perl script to make it easier to add the patches to your system. The perl script only installs the patches for packages that your system has installed.
To use the script, log in as root and do the following:
# mount ftp.uci.edu:/extra/ftp/mirrors/redhat /mnt # /path/to/add-patches /mnt/updates/version/arch
Replace "version" with the Red Hat version you are running (6.0 or 6.1), and "arch" with i386, alpha, or sparc.
The script will figure out (via rpm -q -a) what packages you have installed, and what packages have patches available, and install the patches. Note that for all packages except kernel, kernel-ibcs, and kernel-pcmcia, the patches are installed with the -U option to rpm. For the above 3 patches, the -i option is used to allow you to update your kernel properly. The procedure to upgrade a kernel is available from Red Hat's web site. See http://www.redhat.com/support/docs/howto/kernel-upgrade/kernel-upgrade.html.
NOTE:Due to changes made by Red Hat in the way that kernel patches are distributed, the add-patches script no longer installs kernel patches. You'll have to install them by hand, which is not that big a deal since you have to update /etc/lilo.conf to use the new kernel anyway.
Last update: June 21, 2000
Author: Mike Iglesias <iglesias@uci.edu>