[tools] Trouble connecting clients (0.8.4, RHEL4) via apt and yum

[Chris Waltham]

I managed to get an apt repository successfully built, after a lot of  
troubleshooting! It turns out I had a extremely simple problem with  
little visible symptoms: I didn't have the apt package on my server,  
so the "genbasedir" command was erroring out and I wasn't noticing it,  
even when using -vvvv flags.

Could we possibly prepend "required" to the word "package" in the  
usage.txt file? The line currently reads "keyword	 description	  
package", hopefully I can save someone else from making the same  
mistake!

I actually wrote a quick guide covering how to configure a RHEL 4AS  
server and RHEL 4AS clients, (Dag?) would you like me to post it? I  
had a bit of trouble navigating what existing documentation there is  
for mrepo, particularly in the light of some documentation still  
calling it yam.


Chris


On Nov 29, 2007, at 1:56 PM, Chris Waltham wrote:

> I've successfully installed 0.8.4 & downloaded an 'updates' and  
> 'extras' set from RHN with my credentials. I would like to have a  
> rhel4as-i386 server serve RPMs to rhel4as-i386 clients; however I am  
> struggling a lot in terms of getting the clients to communicate with  
> the server. My preference is to use apt on the clients (I am very  
> inexperienced with yum, and I think I prefer apt).
>
> I can successfully browse to http://host.name/mrepo/rhel4as-i386 on  
> the server; when I do I see the following directories that are all  
> populated with files:
>
> RPMS.all, RPMS.extras, RPMS.os, RPMS.rhnlogin (this one is actually  
> empty), RPMS.updates, disc1, disc2, disc3, disc4, iso
>
> If I point a browse to http://server.host.name/repo, I see the  
> following banner on how I may want to configure my client:
>
> Network installation: Select "HTTP installation method" »  
> "server.host.name" » "/mrepo/rhel4as-i386/" during installation
> Apt configuration: Add "rpm http://server.host.name /mrepo/rhel4as- 
> i386/ os updates repo1 repo2 ..." to /etc/apt/sources.list
> Yum configuration: Add "baseurl=http://server.host.name/mrepo/rhel4as-i386/RPMS.repo 
> " to /etc/yum.conf
>
> I believe that the name of my repository is simply "rhel4as"; here  
> is the contents of /etc/mrepo.conf on the mrepo server:
>
> [main]
> srcdir = /var/mrepo
> wwwdir = /var/www/mrepo
> confdir = /etc/mrepo.conf.d
> arch = i386
> mailto = root at localhost
> smtp-server = localhost
> rhnlogin = username:secretpass
>
> [rhel4as]
> name = Red Hat Enterprise Server $release U3 ($arch)
> release = 4
> rhnrelease = 4AS
> arch = i386
> metadata = apt yum
> iso = RHEL$release-U3-$arch-AS-disc?.iso
> updates = rhn:///rhel-$arch-as-$release
> extras = rhn:///rhel-$arch-as-$release-extras
> #dag = rsync://apt.sw.be/pub/freshrpms/pub/dag/redhat/el$release/en/ 
> $arch/RPMS.$repo/
>
> Given that my preference is to use apt, here is the contents of /etc/ 
> apt/sources.list on one of my clients:
>
> rpm http://server.host.name /mrepo/rhel4as-i386/ os updates rhel4as
>
> Now, when I try and run a simple "apt-get update" on the client,  
> this is what I get:
>
> [root at client.host.name apt]# apt-get update
> E: Malformed line 1 in source list /etc/apt/sources.list (Absolute  
> dist)
>
> Am I not actually able to point apt-get at a mrepo server? Should I  
> be changing the /etc/sysconfig/rhn/sources file instead? I am not  
> sure which one I would prefer to change. I tried to guess at what  
> the error message from apt-get meant, I thought that perhaps it  
> wants to automatically determine the architecture of the machine,  
> instead of letting me hard-code it. Because the name of my repo is  
> simply "rhel4as", I tried this as a line in /etc/apt/sources.list:
>
> rpm http://server.host.name/mrepo/ rhel$(VERSION)as-$(ARCH) os  
> updates extras
>
> Unfortunately, that didn't work either:
>
> [root at client.host.name apt]# apt-get update
> Ign http://server.host.name rhel4as-i386 release
> 25% [Connecting to apt.sw.be]
> ^C^C^C^C
>
> To be honest, I am confused about one thing: should I be using  
> up2date combined with an _apt repository_ to update my clients, or  
> should I be using apt-get directly? Or is either one possible?  
> Moving on to using up2date (with apt or yum), I encountered more  
> fatal errors. Using the following line in my client's /etc/sysconfig/ 
> rhn/sources:
>
> apt all http://server.host.name/mrepo rhel4as-i386 os extras updates  
> local
>
> Was unsuccessful, as it produced this error:
>
> [root at client ~]# up2date -u
> There was a fatal error communicating with the server. The message  
> was:
>
> An HTTP error occurred:
> URL: http://server.host.name/mrepo/rhel4as-i386/base/pkglist.os.bz2
> Status Code: 404
> Error Message: Not Found
>
> After updating and then forcefully re-generating the repositories on  
> my server, I still cannot find pkglist.os.bz2 anywhere on the  
> server's filesystem. My next step was to try using yum, with /etc/ 
> sysconfig/rhn/sources on my client looking like this:
>
> yum base http://server.host.name/mrepo/rhel4as-$ARCH/RPMS.os/
> yum updates http://server.host.name/mrepo/rhel4as-$ARCH/RPMS.updates/
> yum extras http://server.host.name/mrepo/rhel4as-$ARCH/RPMS.extras/
>
> Now, I get a different error:
>
> [root at client.host.name ~]# up2date --showall
> An error has occurred:
>
> An HTTP error occurred:
> URL: http://server.host.name/mrepo/rhel4as-i386/RPMS.os//headers/header.info
> Status Code: 404
> Error Message: Not Found
>
> See /var/log/up2date for more information
>
> Like before, header.info does not exist anywhere on the mrepo  
> server's filesystem. At this point, I am simply out of ideas. Could  
> someone please help get me moving in the right direction? For me,  
> the simplest solution would be to have the client's up2date point at  
> an apt repository, or have the client run apt-get update directly.
>
> Thanks,
>
>
> Chris