Linux Patch Management: Keeping Linux Systems Up To Date

In addition to being completely outdated, this is an extremely weak book. And it was weak at the moment it was published.It does not discuss internals of RPMs and the ways to create your own RPMs (which is pretty powerful software distribution and maintenance mechanism).All author did is to describe on a very superficial level several existing implementations.

Although I'm very proficient on the Linux distros that I use every day, I always seem to have a new Linux system enter the environment that I'm unfamiliar with and must maintain or visit a site that uses a distro that my only interaction with was to patch on my last visit (...now how did I do that again?). Trying to remember all of the patching idiosyncrasies of each distro used to be a daunting task until I found this book. Linux Patch Management has been a Godsend. It is one of just a handful of books that I keep on my desk because I always seem to need it.And besides being an incredibly useful guide to patching rarely visited systems, it also helps outline various patching strategies for the enterprise. It gives detailed instructions on setting up local patch repositories and proxies to help you control your environment's systems as well as provide a substantial time and bandwidth savings.From single unfamiliar systems to enterprise-wide system management, this book has something for everyone and is written with just the right amount of information. A must have.

My first reaction to this was negative. What the heck do you need a book on this subject for - aren't the man pages enough?Then I waffled a little - maybe it is nice to have the 10,000 foot overview of all of this, mixed in with some useful advice.I'm still not sure. If you are managing multiple systems or are a consultant who is apt to run into most anything, this could be very helpful. For the average Linux user, maybe not: in my experience such people either leave their systems alone (no updates at all) or are themselves expert and keep their systems perfectly current - the latter probably don't need this.But I still have that nagging doubt. For my own machines in my own office, I vacillate horribly. I always do the updates after an initial install, but often I ignore them after that unless it's some very serious security issue that I can't ignore. I do this because I don't want to break my systems and often I just don't have time to stage and test things.. but on the other hand sometimes I get religious and keep on top of a box weekly.So.. I remain unsure of this book's value to me, but I'll keep it around as insurance.

This book is almost ten years out of date? Could we get a revised edition? Lots of things have changed in the world since this was first written it would be nice to get it updated with the latest and greatest from the experts.

A major difference between the different linux distrubutions is their Patch Management (or application management) implementation. I have found that most books pick one (or two) distro's and move forward into their topic--this book covers all of the major patch management solutions.This book covers the full spectrum from a single machine environment, to setting up an environment that manages multiple machines, in a well organized easy to read format.I would of appreciated a direct pro/con comparison of the different solutions--but that would just start a flame war.

For a begginner-to-intermediate sysadmin this book is a valuable resource, but for the professional already administering hunderds or thousands of servers it is of no real use.