[elrepo] Announcement: EL7 Updated kmod-nvidia package for RHEL7.6

[John Hodrien]

On Mon, 12 Nov 2018, Rejean Lepage wrote:

> Hi Phil, thank you for your reply.
>
> As you said below, I am not upsetting but do have concern about this. It's
> because yum-cron will not be able to apply any update or security at all time
> Whenever elrepo issue an impossible patch. Because of this I had to disable
> elrepo and use it as required only.
>
> Orion's idea to skip_broken=1 was a good start.
> Otherwise it will fails leaving all systems unable to install any updates.
>
> ---> Package kmod-nvidia-340xx.x86_64 0:340.107-1.el7_5.elrepo will be updated
> ---> Package kmod-nvidia-340xx.x86_64 0:340.107-2.el7_6.elrepo will be an update
>
> In your reply I had the feeling you assume I am merely a single user - as I
> manager several hundred EL systems including Scientific Linux, CentOS and Redhat
> Enterprise linux, Solaris and Windows all together. All systems must have
> security updates at all time those EL76 updates will stop that.

If you're going to use external repos directly, this is the pain you face, and
skip-broken is indeed exactly what you want here.  Otherwise any breakage at
all leads you to blocking all updates.

Obviously you're also free to mirror elrepo and then tailor it to taste.  You
could exclude the nvidia packages from elrepo and curate the ones you want
into a separate repo.  Anything and everything is an option to you.

> I disagree, 7.4 or 7.5 are not are simply points in time. They are supported
> separate configurations... If you look at Scientific Linux
> http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/ you will see that we can choose
> to install any specific version and keep with it. Some do need to be frozen at a
> specific version 7.4 for example... and unless we use 7x or 7rolling which is
> always the latest.
>
> Why? some EDA CAD tools that are qualified to specific version on EL7.4 for example.
> Other case when systems wasn't auto updated offline for a while... then yum-cron
> would fail to updates because of nvidia's missing kernel....thus requiring
> manual intervention.

I'm not entirely sure what you end up with though.  What does it mean to be
running a CAD tool certified to run on RHEL 7.0 when you're running an install
of SL 7.0 running kernel-3.10.0-862.14.4.el7, with gnome-3.22?  You're running
uncertified, however you skin that particular cat.

I'm not an SL user, but I'm not confused here am I?

http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/7.0/x86_64/updates/security/

> They way I see it - a simple solution would be, for you to change how the
> repos work. The current way only support latest 7rolling, 7x on RHEL.
> Others like Scientific Linux does it as 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 7.5 so some can
> freeze their install to a specific version.

SL 7.0 security updates provides kernel-3.10.0-862.14.4.el7, which is from
RHEL 7.5.  I don't see how you'd deliver it in the way you suggest.

jh