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<title>Script to import centos-announce messages into a spacewalk server</title>
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<h1>Script to import <tt>centos-announce</tt> messages into a spacewalk server</h1>
<p style="font-size: 140%; border: 1px solid black;">
<strong>NEW:</strong> Script development has been moved to <a href="https://github.com/davidnutter/Centos-Errata">GitHub</a>
</p>
<h2>Overview</h2>
<p><strong>ObDisclaimer:</strong> This script is somewhat rough
around the edges and may well eat your cat. Use at own risk!
</p>
<p>
This tool will take a collection of postings from the
<tt>centos-announce</tt> mailing list. It can accept a digest or a
decompressed pipermail archive downloaded from <a
href="http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-announce/">the
list archive pages</a>, convert them to basic errata, upload
them to a spacewalk server and publish them to a named channel
which contains the relevant update packages.
</p>
<h2>Installation</h2>
<ol>
<li>Download the two <a href="#files">files</a> at the end onto a client machine with
access to the spacewalk server and to an up to date local centos
mirror. The machine from which you push packages should
be fine</li>
<li> Rename <tt>centos-errata.py.txt</tt> to <tt>centos_errata.py</tt> and
make it executable. </li>
<li> Customize <tt>centos-errata.cfg</tt> for your
organization. See <a href="#config">Config Options</a> for details.</li>
</ol>
<h3>Prerequisites</h3>
<p>The script relies on the following python modules not in the base distribution:</p>
<ul>
<li>email</li>
<li>libxml2</li>
<li>lxml</li>
<li>rpm</li>
</ul>
<h3><a name="config">Config options</a></h3>
<p>
Options can be specified in a configuration file or on the command
line. The basic config file looks like this:
<pre>
[centos errata]
#Required to identify applicable messages on the centos-announce mailing list
version=5
#Useful for interpolation below, not used by tool itself
release=7
#If true the script will attempt to use the Redhat Network to populate the errata description
scrape_rhn=False
#Set order of places to look for package NVREA. The only allowable search
#strategy is just "dir".
#The "spacewalk" and "satellite" strategies
#are deprecated due to CentOS not using md5sum signatures anymore
search_strategies=dir
#Maximum number of errata to process at once. Only relevant to format 'mail-archive.com'
#max_errata
[spacewalk]
server=spacewalk.bioss.sari.ac.uk
login=dnutter
#Location of content on spacewalk server. Only used for search strategy of satellitedir
satellite_dir=/var/satellite
#The tool will prompt you if you don't specify a password
#password=reallysecret
#Per-architecture configurations. Errata will be published for all architectures listed in sections below.
#See the script for list of valid arches.
#[i386]
#All files for regular updates mentioned in the centos-announce postings
#should reside in this directory. reposyncing the "updates" repo of
#your fave centos release should do the trick.
#package_dir=/usr/ghost/RH_install/CentOS/%(version)s.%(release)s/updates/i386/RPMS/
#All files for FastTrack updates should reside here.
#fasttrack_package_dir=/usr/ghost/RH_install/CentOS/%(version)s.%(release)s/fasttrack/i386/RPMS/
#Update errata will be published to this channel so you should push the
#packages in the directory above to this channel BEFORE you run
#centos-errata.py.
#channel=centos-i386-updates-%(version)s.%(release)s
#Fasttrack errata will be published to this channel
#fasttrack_channel=centos-i386-fasttrack-%(version)s.%(release)s
[x86_64]
package_dir=/usr/ghost/RH_install/CentOS/%(version)s.%(release)s/updates/x86_64/RPMS/
#package_dir=/tmp/testrpms
channel=centos-x86_64-updates-%(version)s.%(release)s
#fasttrack_package_dir=/usr/ghost/RH_install/CentOS/%(version)s.%(release)s/fasttrack/x86_64/RPMS/
#fasttrack_channel=centos-x86_64-fasttrack-%(version)s.%(release)s
<!-- TODO: change channel naming convention to match the -->
<!-- spacewalk-common-channels script (Mohammed Arafa) -->
</pre>
<p>
The tool has command line help showing the options you can
set. For the config file above, asking for help would yield the
following output:
</p>
<pre>
usage: centos-errata.py [options] [filename]
options:
--version show program's version number and exit
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-s SERVER, --server=SERVER
RHN Satellite server hostname
-l LOGIN, --login=LOGIN
RHN Login
--password=PASSWORD RHN password (cleartext)
--max-errata=MAX_ERRATA
Maximum number of errata to process at once. Only relevant to format 'mail-archive.com'
-c CONFIG_FILE, --config=CONFIG_FILE
Read the specified config file in addition to the default centos-errata.cfg
-f FORMAT, --format=FORMAT
Select input format for tool. Default is digest. Valid options are digest, archive, mail-archive.com
--scrape-rhn Connect to the RedHat Network site and attempt to download errata information
--satellite-dir=SATELLITE_DIR
If running on a spacewalk server, specify the location of RPM files (default: /var/satellite)
--show-config Do not connect to the Spacewalk server, just print configuration information
-t, --test Do not connect to the Spacewalk server, just process the input file and print errata information. Will also print configuration information
--centos-version=CENTOS_VERSION
The centos version (e.g. '5' for Centos 5.3)
--search-strategies=SEARCH_STRATEGIES
Set place(s) to look for package NVREA. The only allowable search strategy is 'dir' (look in the package directories). Example: "dir"
--x86_64-channel=X86_64_CHANNEL
The updates channel for arch x86_64. Separate multiple channels with a comma
--x86_64-packagedir=X86_64_PACKAGEDIR
The package directory for arch x86_64
--x86_64-ft-channel=X86_64_FASTTRACK_CHANNEL
The FastTrack updates channel for arch x86_64. Separate multiple channels with a comma
--x86_64-ft-packagedir=X86_64_FASTTRACK_PACKAGEDIR
The FastTrack package directory for arch x86_64
</pre>
<h2>How to use</h2>
<ol>
<li>Push all updates from your local centos mirror to your
spacewalk server</li>
<li>Get a <tt>centos-announce</tt> digest posting or download an
archive from the <a
href="http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-announce/">the
list archive pages</a>. If you just want to play, I provide some
test <a href="#files">files</a> below.</li>
<li>Uncompress the archive, if used. </li>
<li>Run the script in test mode (<tt>--test</tt>) on your file to
check your configuration is correct for the errata you want for your
distribution. Remember to specify <tt>-f archive</tt> if you are
using the downloaded archive format</li>
<li>Run the script without the <tt>--test</tt> flag to push the
errata to your spacewalk server</li>
<li>The script is not very chatty when pushing errata - be patient
as it takes about 15 seconds for each one to upload.</li>
<li>Log in to spacewalk and examine your freshly-minted errata.</li>
</ol>
<h3>
Simple example usage
</h3>
<p>This assumes customization of config file and
use of a digest posting:</p>
<pre>
./centos-errata.py /tmp/centos-digest-message.txt
</pre>
<h3>
More complicated usage:
</h3>
<pre>
./centos-errata.py --i386-channel my-i386-updates \
--server spacewalk.example.com \
--i386-packagedir /centos-mirror/5.3/updates/x86_64/RPMS \
/tmp/centos-announce-digest.txt
</pre>
<p>
Test mode usage, using archive format:
</p>
<pre>
./centos-errata.py -f archive --test /tmp/2009-May.txt
</pre>
<h3>Supporting Centos 5 and Centos 6 together</h3>
<p>
Simple enough. On a CentOS 6 machine:
</p>
<ol>
<li>Copy your CentOS 5 config file</li>
<li>Customize the copy for CentOS 6</li>
<li><pre>Run centos-errata.py -c centos_6.cfg digest-message.txt</pre>
</ol>
<p>
Please note that you can't do this on CentOS 5 due to RPM version
differences: CentOS 5's RPM cannot read CentOS 6's RPM files.
</p>
<h2>Limitations/TODO list</h2>
<ol>
<li>Search strategies "spacewalk" and "satellitedir" no longer
work as they rely on knowing the md5sum of the package beforehand.
Unfortunately CentOS have stopped sending the md5sum with each
announce email due to md5 collision issues. Now they send a sha256sum,
which is no good for our purposes!</li>
<li>MBOX format is not supported for input. It should
be as it is very close to the archive format</li>
<li>The errata data is set to the time the errata was created on
spacewalk. This is a limitation of the spacewalk API for creating Errata</li>
<li>Errata are very basic. If you want full errata, then buying
Satellite is your best bet.</li>
<li>Updating preexisting errata is not possible</li>
<li>The tool does not check to see if the <tt>update_channel</tt>
exists</li>
<li>Maybe the tool should try and push missing packages to the
named <tt>update_channel</tt>, if they exist on disk. Unfortunately the XMLRPC api does
not seem to support an <tt>pushPackage</tt> function (unless I'm
being blind) so adding this function would require importing the
necessary code from rhnpush</li>
<li>All the classes (RHNSession and friends) and other
generally-useful code should be moved to a module</li>
<li>The config file should probably reside in
<tt>/etc/sysconfig/rhn</tt>. This is a packaging problem
though</li>
<li>Better docs, more testing, fedora support...</li>
</ol>
<h2><a name="files">Files</a></h2>
<p>Here are the files in this release:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="centos-errata.py.txt">centos-errata.py.txt</a></li>
<li><a href="centos-errata.8">centos-errata.8</a> Manual page</li>
<li><a href="centos-errata.cfg">centos-errata.cfg</a></li>
<li><a href="testdata.tar.gz">testdata.tar.gz</a></li>
</ul>
<p>
Further development of the script has been moved to <a href="https://github.com/davidnutter/Centos-Errata">GitHub</a>
</p>
<h2>Acknowledgements and stuff</h2>
<p>
This script is based on <a
href="https://fedorahosted.org/spacewalk/browser/contrib/rhn-tool">rhn-tool</a>
by Lars Jonsson. The script and support material is licenced under the terms of the LGPL.
</p>
<p>
Raal Goff produced an amended version of the script that
introduced multiple architecture support, spacewalk server
searches and website scraping. This script essentially
incorporates his changes and tidies up argument parsing. Thanks Raal!
</p>
<p>Jeremy Davis provided a patch to allow multiple update channels
per architecture</p>
<p>
Phillip Schuler, Stefan Förster and David Hrbáč all helped with
resolving issues with the email format change. Thanks!
</p>
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