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The question here is similar, but not identical, to my (broader) question, which is:

TLD;DR version

Are there any tools for CentOS 6 (preferably in the base or EPEL repos) which provide any or all of the following functionality:

  • list packages which need updating for security reasons
  • list packages which (1) need updating and have (2) been in CESAs / RHSAs recently (i.e. within the last two months). (This assumes that important security updates released earlier than that have already been tested, approved, and deployed)
  • list the associated RHSAs or CESAs associated with the above

Why?

The yum-plugin-security package alone and unmodified is not enough.

On CentOS, the yum-security plugin doesn't give complete results. Some installed packages which have had CESA + RHSA updates within the last week are not listed when running yum --security check-update, including updates to the kernel (!). Other packages- e.g. openssh and openssl- are listed.

While I could write a tool with the second two pieces of functionality within about a day or two by spidering the CentOS announce mailing list archives, I'd much rather work with / work on an existing tool rather than reinvent the wheel.

Community
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Parthian Shot
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1 Answers1

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RedHat curates its package updates for which ones are security related. There is nothing in the rpm spec that allows a packager to explicitly mark a package update as 'security', so RH has to (paid) work to maintain that. CentOs does not have a reliable equivalent.

Jason Martin
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