1 About the Unbreakable Linux Network
Note:
This documentation is specific to Oracle Linux 6 and Oracle Linux 7. If you're using Oracle Linux 8 or Oracle Linux 9, see Oracle Linux: Managing Software on Oracle Linux.This chapter describes what the Unbreakable Linux Network (ULN) is and how it works. It includes a description of the packages required for a system to connect to ULN and also describes how channels are named and how software errata are released to the different channels.
If you have a subscription to Oracle Linux Support, you can use the comprehensive resources of the Unbreakable Linux Network (ULN). ULN offers software patches, updates, and fixes for Oracle Linux and Oracle VM, as well as information on yum, Ksplice, and support policies. You can also download useful packages that are not included in the original distribution. The ULN Alert Notification Tool periodically checks with ULN and alerts you when updates are available. You can access ULN at https://linux.oracle.com/, where you will also find instructions for registering with ULN, for creating local yum repositories, and for switching from the Red Hat Network (RHN) to ULN.
If you want to use yum with ULN to manage your systems, you must register the systems with ULN and subscribe each system to one or more ULN channels. When you register a system with ULN, the channel that contains the latest version is chosen automatically, according to the architecture and operating system revision of the system. See ULN Registration for more information.
When you run the yum command, it connects to the ULN server repository and downloads the latest software packages in RPM format onto your system. yum then presents you with a list of the available packages so that you can choose which packages you want to install.
ULN Access for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
Compute nodes running Oracle Linux on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and that are connected to a service gateway automatically have access to ULN content via the regional yum servers available on the Oracle Services Network. These yum servers differ from the publicly available Oracle Linux yum server in that they also mirror content available on restricted ULN channels.
Access to ULN content is provided by virtue of the support contract that you have for your Oracle Cloud Infrastructure account. You are able to access content on ULN without any requirement to register or use alternate tools to manage channel access, simplifying any software management that you need to perform on a compute node.
To enable access to restricted content via the regional yum
servers, ensure that you have installed the appropriate
release-elx
packages and enabled the repositories that you require access
to. For example, on Oracle Linux 7, you can run the following commands to
access the ol7_oci_included
repository, where
tools like Oracle InstantClient, the Oracle Java Development Kit
and Oracle Java Runtime Environment are located:
# yum install oci-included-release-el7
# yum-config-manager --enablerepo ol7_oci_included
Other ULN channels are also available directly via the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure regional yum servers. For instance, to access the Ksplice channels on an Oracle Linux 7 compute instance, you can do:
# yum install ksplice-release-el7
# yum-config-manager --enablerepo ol7_ksplice ol7_x86_64_userspace_ksplice
About the rhn-setup Package
The tools to register with ULN from an Oracle Linux or Oracle VM system are
provided in the rhn-setup
package. This
package is available on the ol6_latest
and
ol7_latest
yum repositories that are
available on the Oracle Linux yum server. This package is usually also installed
by default on a new installation of an Oracle Linux system.
You can also manually download the RPMs from ULN, directly, by browsing the appropriate channel and architecture for your system.
If you intend to migrate from the RedHat Network (RHN) to ULN, you should replace the matching package with the version provided by Oracle, to obtain access to the additional tools that make this possible. See Migrating from RHN to ULN for more information.
About ULN Channels
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. Support for the preview packages is limited to package installation assistance only. |
|
Provides packages that are still under development at Oracle and are made available as technical previews for developer and test engineer usage. Support for the preview packages is limited to package installation assistance only. |
|
Provides a mirror of the selected packages that are available on the EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux) repository. Support for the EPEL packages is limited to package installation assistance only. |
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.
Caution:
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 7.1, 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 ULN Channel Subscription Management.
About Software Errata
Oracle releases important changes to the Oracle Linux and Oracle VM software
as individual package updates, known as errata. These package
updates are made available for download on ULN before they are
gathered into a release or distributed through the
_patch
channel.
Errata packages can contain the following:
-
Security advisories, which have names prefixed by
ELSA-*
(for Oracle Linux) andOVMSA-*
(for Oracle VM). -
Bug fix advisories, which have names prefixed by
ELBA-*
andOVMBA-*
. -
Feature enhancement advisories, which have names prefixed by
ELEA-*
andOVMEA-*
.
To be notified when new errata packages are released, you can subscribe to the Oracle Linux and Oracle VM errata mailing lists at https://oss.oracle.com/mailman/listinfo/el-errata and https://oss.oracle.com/mailman/listinfo/oraclevm-errata.
If you are logged into ULN, you can also subscribe to these mailing lists by following the Subscribe to Enterprise Linux Errata mailing list and Subscribe to Oracle VM Errata mailing list links that are provided on the Errata tab.
Oracle publishes a complete list of errata made available on ULN at https://linux.oracle.com/errata. You can also see a published listing of Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) and explore their details and status at https://linux.oracle.com/cve.
Access Requirements For Restrictive Outbound Firewall Policies
For ULN to function correctly, the host system must have
outbound access to linux-update.oracle.com
via port 443
.
If the outbound firewall you have configured does not support adding exceptions for hostnames, you can use the following IP addresses:
- 138.1.51.46
-
ULN IP address from 30 October 2020 at 10pm PT onwards
- 137.254.56.42
-
ULN IP address until 30 October 2020 at 10pm PT
For More Information About ULN
You can find out more information about ULN at https://linux.oracle.com/.