When you use ZENworks Linux Management to mirror a Red Hat distribution from the Red Hat Network, the mirroring process creates a single bundle containing all of the RPM packages. This bundle is not usually assigned directly to a managed device because it contains the entire Red Hat distribution and might contain RPM packages that conflict with each other.
Following are two scenarios for updating devices with RPM packages:
If you want to provide all RPM packages via a catalog, create a catalog and add the mirrored Red Hat Network bundle to it, then assign the catalog to the managed devices. This allows users to have access through the catalog to all of the RPM packages contained in the Red Hat Network bundle.
For more information on mirroring and catalogs, see Section 25.3, Configuring a Software Mirror and Section 22.2, Creating Catalogs.
From a managed device, there are two ways that you can force deployment and installation of the updates included in the Red Hat Network bundles contained in a catalog:
Using the ZENworks Linux Management Update Manager: From the managed device, click > , then select the catalog and click > .
Using rug: On a managed device, start a console session and enter the rug up command.
For SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 (SLES 10) and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED 10) devices:
/usr/bin/rug up
For other managed devices:
/opt/novell/zenworks/bin/rug up
For more information, see rug (1).
If you want to provide specific RPM packages, you can create a custom bundle by selecting the desired subset of RPM packages from the initial bundle that was created when mirroring the Red Hat Network. Or, you can create several custom bundles, each containing one or more RPM packages. It is best to test your custom bundles on a single device to verify that there are no conflicts within a bundle. If the test is successful, you can then assign the bundles to your managed devices.
To ensure that the packages contained in the custom bundle can meet all of their dependencies, you can create a catalog containing the mirrored Red Hat Network bundle and make it available to the desired managed devices. During the catalog creation process, you can hide this catalog from users. After you assign the custom bundle to devices, if a package requires other packages for dependency resolution, the device has access to the packages in the hidden catalog. For more information, see Section 22.2, Creating Catalogs.
Managed devices refresh on a schedule. Also, an administrator can trigger a device refresh through the ZENworks Control Center. When a device refreshes, it downloads the bundle automatically from the server and installs it.
The managed device requests one or more bundles from the server. In other words, the server does not actually push the bundle. However, the server can tell the managed device to refresh immediately. You can also modify the refresh interval centrally from the server for one or more managed devices. Otherwise, the client refreshes on its own schedule to look for a scheduled action.
From a managed device, you can use rug to force a refresh by entering the rug refresh command.
For SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 (SLES 10) and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED 10) devices:
/usr/bin/rug refresh
For other managed devices:
/opt/novell/zenworks/bin/rug refresh
For more information, see rug (1).