Red Hat

Hi,

I am managing a Few Applications (like Apache,Jboss) running on RHEL 5.4.
I have just been notified that these servers need to be patched.

My question is ,will the configurations for Apache and Jboss and other applications get disturbed if the server is patched.?
If so what precautions need to be set.

Thanks
HG

Depends entirely on what you're patching why...

Generally, yum and rpm are smart enough not to clobber your config files. Yum and rpm recognize commonly edited configuration files and treat them differently than the other files they would be installing.

If the existing version of the config file has default settings that would be incompatible or unsafe with the new package, then the new file is copied into place and the old file is saved as .rpmsave. If the older file would be safe to use, then the original file is left in place and the newer version is installed with a .rpmnew suffix.

For instance, if you update apache and the old /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf file had some settings that were incompatible with the new package, the new config file would be copied in as /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf and the old file would be preserved as /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf.rpmsave. If the apache package is updated and the old config file is safe to use, then it would remain as /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf and the new config file would go on as /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf.rpmnew. If it's a known configuration file that has been changed, then yum / rpm will always do one or the other.

Yum / rpm will notify you of these actions as the packages are updated, or you can just do a find file *.rpmnew and *.rpmsave after the update. Either way, you would manually reconcile the the config files to incorporate your changes into the newer version of the file.

Regardless of all of this, always make sure you have a valid backup before you patch. Even a quick tarball can save your bacon if things go terribly wrong.

Thanks sds9985 & Corona,

That really enriched my knowledge base. I am now confident of moving ahead.

HG

A rule of thumb to follow is this:

Create a test environment. Test in the test environment. Even if it is virtual, or on a PC, it is better than testing with live equipment. I am amazed and appalled at how many people will try to wing it on their live production machines.

Thanks Mark for the rule of thumb,But this was for my QA environment only.
I didn't want to mess it out of my ignorance.

HG