ULN provides more than 100 unique channels, which support the i386, x86_64, IA64, and the 64-bit Arm architectures, for releases of Oracle Linux 4 update 6 and later and Oracle VM 2.1 and later.
You can choose that your system remain at a specific OS revision, or you can allow the system to be updated with packages from later revisions.
You should subscribe to the channel that corresponds to the architecture of your system and the update level at which you want to maintain it. Patches and errata are available for specific revisions of Oracle Linux, but you do not need to upgrade from a given revision level to install these fixes. ULN channels also exist for MySQL, Oracle VM, Oracle Ksplice, OCFS2, RDS, and productivity applications.
The following table describes the main channels that are available.
Channel | Description |
---|---|
|
Provides all the latest versions of the packages in
a distribution, including any errata that are also
provided in the patch channel. If no vulnerabilities
have been found in a package, the package version
might be the same as that included in the original
distribution. For other packages, the version is the
same as that provided in the patch channel for the
highest update level. For example, the
|
|
Provides older versions of packages that are added
to a parent channel. The
Packages are moved to an archive channel when newer
versions of the same packages are added to the
parent channel. This helps to keep the metadata for
the parent channel manageable and also keeps the
overall size of the channel down to a minimum. If
you require an earlier version of a package, you can
subscribe to the equivalent
Installing packages from an
|
| Provides the packages for each major version and minor update of Oracle Linux and Oracle VM. This channel corresponds to the released ISO media image. For example, there is a base channel for each of the update level of an Oracle Linux release . Oracle does not publish security errata and bug fixes on these channels. |
| Provides only those packages that have changed since the initial release of a major or minor version of Oracle Linux or Oracle VM. The patch channel always provides the most recent version of a package, including all fixes that have been provided since the initial version was released. |
| Provides packages that are not included in the base distribution, such as the package that you can use to create a local yum repository on Oracle Linux. |
| Provides freely downloadable RPMs from Oracle that you can install on Oracle Linux, such as ASMLib and Oracle Instant Client. |
|
Provides optional packages for Oracle Linux 7 that have been
sourced from upstream. This channel includes most
development packages ( |
| Provides packages that can be used to set up test and development environments for Oracle Linux. Packages released in this channel include tools that can be useful for developers and test engineers when setting up an environment. |
| Provides packages that are still under development at Oracle and are made available as technical previews for developer and test engineer usage. These packages are not for use in a production environment and are not supported by Oracle. |
| Provides a mirror of the packages that are available on the EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux) repository. The packages hosted in this channel are available for Oracle Linux users but are unsupported by Oracle. |
Other channels may also be available, such as
_beta
channels for the beta versions of
packages.
As each new, major version or minor update of Oracle Linux becomes
available, Oracle creates new base and patch channels for each
supported architecture to distribute new packages. The existing
base and patch channels for the previous versions or updates
remain available and do not include the new packages. The
_latest
channel distributes the latest
possible version of any package, and tracks the top of the
development tree independently of the update level.
You can choose to maintain your system at a specific update
level of Oracle Linux and selectively apply errata to that level by
subscribing the system to the _base
and
_patch
channels and unsubscribing it from
the _latest
channel. However, patches are
not added to the _patch
channel for
previous updates of Oracle Linux after a new update has been released.
For example, after the release of Oracle Linux 7 Update 1, no further errata
will be released on the ol7_x86_64_u0_patch
channel.
Oracle recommends that you keep you system subscribed to the
_latest
channel. If you unsubscribe from
the _latest
channel, your system will
become vulnerable to security-related issues when a new update
is released.
For more information about the channels available for any system that you have registered with ULN, see Section 4.1, “ULN Channel Subscription Management”.