Bug 862042

Summary:	[RFE] Exclude Packages for a System
Product:	[Community] Spacewalk	Reporter:	Kevin Stange <kevin>
Component:	Server	Assignee:	Tomas Lestach <tlestach>
Status:	CLOSED DEFERRED	QA Contact:	Red Hat Satellite QA List <satqe-list>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	1.8	CC:	mail
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2020-03-23 12:21:18 UTC	Type:	Bug
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On:
Bug Blocks:	737830

Description Kevin Stange 2012-10-01 17:28:34 UTC

I have a system which has a custom kernel and older version of openvpn installed.  To avoid having spacewalk install updates to these packages, I have these excludes listed in /etc/yum/pluginconf.d/rhnplugin.conf:

exclude=analog dpkg openvpn kernel kernel-PAE kernel-debug kernel-xen

However, in the spacewalk server WebUI, the package updates are listed and cannot be marked as "ignore" for a specific update or excluded permanently by name.  Via email, I get a message multiple times a day with errata for package updates on these systems.

This request is for an exclude or ignore option that prevents spacewalk from considering a particular update as applicable to a system.

Comment 1 Kevin Stange 2012-10-01 17:33:54 UTC

Just to follow up on this idea, it might make sense to be able to apply the exclusions to a system group in addition to per-system exclusions.

Comment 2 Michael Mráka 2012-10-03 08:03:26 UTC

Hi Kevin,

although Spacewalk can't exclude certain packages for server/group you can achieve this by creating cloned channel which contains all but excluded packages.
Any time later updated packages in original channel can be simply cloned to new channel via errata cloning.

Regards,
Michael

Comment 3 Rolf Linder 2012-11-07 11:22:40 UTC

Hi Kevin

We are using an older version of spacewalk, but had the same problem (use a specified version of an rpm on some systems). 

Maybe you could try using the yum plugin "yum-plugin-versionlock". In our environment, with this plugin (see steps below) we could "lock" the packages, so that also update tasks from spacewalk will not update these packages:

1. install plugin: "yum install yum-plugin-versionlock.noarch"
2. exclude package foo: "yum versionlock foo"
3. check exclude: "yum check-update"

Maybe this is a solution for your problem.

Kind regards,
Rolf Linder

Comment 4 Jan Pazdziora 2012-12-07 20:04:27 UTC

Am I correct in assuming that this is basically the same RFE as tracked in bug 129178?

Comment 5 Kevin Stange 2012-12-07 21:11:14 UTC

No, I don't think so.  My request is to exclude packages permanently, not to ever show them as updates, for a given system or system group.  I don't want to have to maintain multiple channels for this.

As an example, I have some systems where I have packages intentionally held back to previous versions that I never want to upgrade because we know the upgrade will break other software on the system, so I want those upgrades not to prompt me for approval as in bug 129178 but simply not be considered upgrade candidates at all, much in the same way as yum can do with the exclude= lines.

Comment 7 Michael Mráka 2020-03-23 12:21:18 UTC

Spacewalk project as an upstream for Red Hat Satellite 5 product is going to be End Of Life on May 31 2020.

Spacewalk 2.10 has been released as the last release of this project.
https://github.com/spacewalkproject/spacewalk/wiki/ReleaseNotes210

Any new feature will not be included therefore closing remaining RFEs to set expectations properly.