Obtain the Errata

1. Use Red Hat's errata advisories to keep up to date with what errata are available and what packages they affect. The best way I have found to do this is to keep tabs on the Red Hat Errata web page.

2. Login to the build machine, either via ssh or on the console. As of this writing the host name is rk-devel.pams.ncsu.edu.

3. First, check that the package is not one which has been modified with patches specific to campus. (If this is the case, the current package in the Realm Kit tree should have "ncsu" as part of the release number.) If the package has been modified, then you will need to update the package to contain the NCSU customizations. This is beyond the scope of this document. Also, its a good idea to install this package on a test machine and make sure it works and is sane. Good places for getting information about errata from Red Hat are the Red Hat mailing lists and by simply asking others that may have already looked at the package in question.

4. Run sudo bash to become root.

   pams% sudo bash bash-2.05a#

   Or gain root privileges by using the ksu command or some other method of becoming root.

5. Download the binary packages from the local mirror such as ftp://kickstart.linux.ncsu.edu/pub/redhat/linux/updates/ for the errata in question. Specific package names can be found in the Red Hat errata advisory. It can be more convenient to NFS mount this directory on the build machine by doing the following.

   bash-2.05a# mount -t nfs kickstart.linux.ncsu.edu:/export/redhat-updates /mnt/net

After the above you should have all the packages that make up all the errata you would like to apply to the Realm Kit trees. You should know what packages apply to what versions of the tree (from the errata advisory), if the package needs have any NCSU customizations done, and that the package is relatively safe to apply.