Problem:
Its hard to keep track on a large scale of what versions of a package are installed on various systems.

I currently use rhnget with the --download-all options so that the entire repository including outdated packages are synced.  I do this because I may need to sync systems to a profile that was created before a package was updated.  When I want to find information on a particular package it is hard to get an overview of what package versions are installed.  For instance if I search for a package that gets updated quite often like firefox there are over 100 packages listed.  Especially when you start throwing multiple distribution channels in i.e. RHEL, CentOS, SL, OEL etc.

So lets say I want to see which systems have firefox installed.  I would have to search for firefox, open a new tab for every version of firefox (over 100 tabs), then select the installed packages tab on each tab. Firefox might not be the best example here because that should always be updated and you can use the errata to see which systems need the new version, but this is still an issue for packages from repos that have no related errata.

Currently you can use SSM to do the Packages->Verify which will give you the number of systems with each package installed, but you cant tell which systems have which versions installed.


Possible Solutions:
Currently when you do the package search for firefox I have two results one for firefox and the other for firefox-devel, and as soon as you click on firefox it brings you to "Packages by Name" which is a list of all of the firefox packages.  It would be nice if this were to bring you to a firefox page with several tabs.  One tab for "Installed Systems", another for "Packages by Name", and whatever else could be beneficial for this page.  The installed systems tab would be just like the installed systems that currently shows up in each package, but would have another column with the currently installed version.  This would mean that you could get an overview of every system and the version for each system installed from one page.

If that's not a possibility (as I assume it would be fairly complicated) an easier solution would be an option to limit the "Packages by Name" page to only package versions that are installed.  The more homogeneous your systems are easier it would be to get your overview.

With both of these options it would also be nice to have an extra column on the "Packages by Name" page that would be the number of systems with the package installed, like in SSM when you go to the verify packages.  Maybe with the option to click on the number and bring you directly to the Installed systems tab for that package version.

Thanks in advance for considering my idea!
-Adam