Often configuration files are also updated during the installation of newer RPM packages. Using the package manager yum you're informed about that like this:

1# yum update
2...
3  Updating   : osad-5.11.33-1.el6.noarch                                  13/32
4warning: /etc/sysconfig/rhn/osad.conf created as …

Sometimes it is necessary to break down the patch status of the Linux landscape.

Especially if the administrator's work is subjected to security standards a constant documentation of maintenance tasks is often necessary.

Using Spacewalk, Red Hat Satellite or SUSE Manager available patches are described as errata. Those …

Recently I had a issue when trying to use the OSA dispatcher integrated in Spacewalk, Red Hat Satellite and SUSE Manager. The software was unable to push actions to registered client systems - it seems that there was a problem with the appropriate service:

1# service jabberd status
2router dead but subsys locked
3sm …

Virtualized Linux guests running on VMware vSphere can only offer the best performance if the helper software VMware Tools in the most recent version.

If you have ever used VMware products you know that constant updates guarantee the support of new operating systems and hardware. But this has also the disadvantage that …

Some system updates (e.g. kernel updates) require the affected Linux system to be rebooted. If the system is managed using Spacewalk, Red Hat Satellite or SUSE Manager this reboot can be scheduled after patching the host very comfortably.

However it is possible that after the reboot (watch the output of the uptime …

After some time old packages are accumulated in software channels managed by Spacewalk, Red Hat Satellite or SUSE Manager.

Especially at least when your hard drive are threaten to get tanked up you should clean up and remove unneeded packages. For this there is a utility called spacewalk-data-fsck - but this tool only …

If you want to list all installed Perl modules - e.g. to make sure all requirements of a Perl application are provided - pmall might help you a lot. On Red Hat Enteprise Linux/CentOS systems the tool is part of the perl-pmtools package and creates an output like below:

1# yum install -y perl-pmtools
2# pmall
3Newt ( …