1. Patching Guide
  2. Configure Your Environment for Patching
  3. Configure the Local ULN Mirror

Configure the Local ULN Mirror

The purpose of the ULN mirror is to replicate channels from the Unbreakable Linux Network (ULN) locally so that your Private Cloud Appliance can access the packages required for patching.

  1. Set up the local ULN mirror system as a yum server and enable replication for the required ULN channels. Refer to the instructions that correspond to the installed operating system.

    Note:

    For consistency with Oracle Linux 7 mirrors, we recommend to continue using uln-yum-mirror on Oracle Linux 8, instead of the dnf reposync command.

    It is considered good practice to keep the operating system of the mirror server up-to-date.

  2. Reserve approximately 60GB of disk space on your mirror for patches. Set up a separate volume and use a file system that can easily be extended, because you may need to increase this capacity over time.

    Best practice is to isolate Oracle Private Cloud Appliance ULN channels from other ULN channels. This eliminates the risk of downloading an enormous volume of unused packages, which would take many extra hours.

  3. Register the host name of your local mirror in your local DNS.

    Configuring the upstream mirror on Oracle Private Cloud Appliance requires the fully qualified domain name; an IP address is not accepted.

  4. Confirm that you have the appropriate version of uln-yum-mirror installed for your operating system.

    • Oracle Linux 8: version 0.4.0-5.el8 or later 

      # yum --disablerepo=* --enablerepo=ol8_addons install uln-yum-mirror

    • Oracle Linux 7: version 0.3.0-10.el7 or later 

      # yum --disablerepo=* --enablerepo=ol7_addons install uln-yum-mirror

  5. Update the ULN mirror configuration by changing the /etc/sysconfig/uln-yum-mirror configuration file.

    • Specify that all versions of every available package must be mirrored. Set ALL_PKGS=1.

    • Prevent the mirror from synchronizing with ULN automatically. Set CRON_ENABLED=0. The mirror must be synchronized manually.

  6. Enable updates for MySQL packages.

    These packages are signed with a different GPG key. The ULN mirror requires the public key to verify the package signatures and download the packages to the local mirror repository (pca302_x86_64_mn).

    1. Download the MySQL GPG key from https://repo.mysql.com/RPM-GPG-KEY-mysql-2022.

    2. Import the GPG key.

      # rpm --import RPM-GPG-KEY-mysql-2022

    Note:

    Additional information is provided in the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance Release Notes. See known issue "No Packages Available to Patch MySQL Cluster Database". It also contains steps to update an existing ULN mirror configuration that does not have the MySQL key yet.