UCS Toolkit - Red Hat Patching

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RED HAT LINUX

Linux is becoming a more and more popular operating system on campus, especially for servers. A large number of these systems are Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). RHEL is updated via "entitlements" to the Red Hat Network (RHN). The entitlements are purchased on an annual basis, and can be purchased directly through our Red Hat reseller, DLT Solutions:

Neil Milks
Sales Representative
DLT Solutions, Inc.
Direct 703-773-1194
Fax 866-708-6842
jason.preston@dlt.com

Patching a Red Hat system that has an RHN entitlement is very easy and there are several options.

From within a KDE or GNOME session, you can just use the graphical application that is usually running in the task bar.
From the command line, use the "up2date" command. Type man up2date for options.
From the RHN web interface, you can select which applications will be updated at next 'check-in'.
From the RHN web interface, you can configure the system to automatically install all updates.

CentOS

CentOS is a free alterntative to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It is based on the same packages as RHEL, so it provides (or strives to provide) full compatibility with RHEL. Instead of using up2date, it uses yum to update it's packages.

General Tips

In addition to promptly applying patches and bug fixes, here are a few other tips that really apply to any system:

Disable unused/unneeded services - if you're not using it, there's no reason for it to be running.
Enable a software firewall - Any current Linux system should come with IPTABLES. If you don't want to have to deal with writing a custom firewall, tools like "lokkit" make it very easy to enable a firewall.
Don't use unsecured communications when passwords are involved - services like telnet and ftp should have long been retired, use ssh and sftp instead.
Have a strong password policy - make sure your users are using complex enough passwords that they're not easy to guess.