You can use the spacewalk-repo-sync utility to synchronize software channels. Using this command requires that you are root or that you have been granted permission in /etc/sudoers. You can run spacewalk-repo-sync manually or in a cron job. If you run the command in a cron job, include the -q or --quiet option to prevent large email messages from being sent to root.

You can use the spacewalk-repo-sync -l command to display the channel label and the URL of the repository, for example:

# spacewalk-repo-sync -l | grep ksplice
ksplice-ol7-x86_64 | uln:///ol7_x86_64_ksplice
ksplice-ol6-i386 | uln:///ol6_i386_ksplice
ksplice-ol6-x86_64 | uln:///ol6_x86_64_ksplice

# spacewalk-repo-sync -l | grep addons
oraclelinux7-x86_64-addons | https://yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL7/addons/x86_64/
oraclelinux6-x86_64-addons | https://yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL6/addons/x86_64/

To synchronize a channel with a ULN repository, use the spacewalk-repo-sync -t uln command, and use the -c option to specify the channel label, for example:

# spacewalk-repo-sync -t uln -c ksplice-ol6-x86_64
#### Channel label: ksplice-ol6-x86_64 ####
Repo URL: uln:///ol6_x86_64_ksplice
The download URL is: https://linux-update.oracle.com/XMLRPC/GET-REQ/ol6_x86_64_ksplice
Packages in repo:              1296
Packages already synced:          0
Packages to sync:              1296
1/1296 : ksplice-snmp-plugin-0.1.0-2.el6-0.x86_64
2/1296 : uptrack-updates-2.6.39-400.210.2.el6uek.x86_64-20150206-0-0.noarch
...
1295/1296 : uptrack-updates-2.6.32-220.el6.x86_64-20150130-0-0.noarch
1296/1296 : uptrack-updates-2.6.32-200.20.1.el6uek.x86_64-20141216-0-0.noarch
Linking packages to channel.
Repo uln:///ol6_x86_64_ksplice has 0 errata.
Sync completed.
Total time: 1 day, 8:56:47

In this example, all the packages were downloaded as the channel had not previously been synchronized with ULN. The total time taken was nearly 33 hours.

To synchronize a channel with an Oracle Linux yum server repository, use the spacewalk-repo-sync command, and use the -c option to specify the channel label, for example:

# spacewalk-repo-sync -c oraclelinux6-x86_64-addons
#### Channel label: oraclelinux6-x86_64-addons ####
Repo URL: https://yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL6/addons/x86_64/
Packages in repo:               308
No new packages to sync.
Repo https://yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL6/addons/x86_64/ has 6 errata.
Sync completed.
Total time: 0:01:09

In this example, there were no new packages available to download.

For more information, see the spacewalk-repo-sync(8) manual page.