How to check security updates list & perform linux patch management RHEL 6/7/8


Written by - Deepak Prasad

In this article, we will examine Red Hat Linux Patch Management, how you can check available vulnerabilities list, security updates lists via yum and external sources, in LIVE production environment, and where you should get patches for RHEL Linux distributions. Patch management and steps to apply patch methods vary by distribution. If you’re paying for support from Red Hat or SUSE, you’re paying in part for support through their patch management systems to apply patch.

What Is Security Patch?

A security patch is an update to fix certain vulnerability. It incorporates changes in source code. Security Patches are normally applied to specific software components, such as the kernel, or a service, such as vsFTP. Security patches may fix bugs, address vulnerability issues etc

Identifying security vulnerabilities list

From time to time multiple security related vulnerabilities list are reported on Linux platform. If you’ve paid for a subscription to a Red Hat or a SUSE distribution, you can get email warnings about these vulnerabilities list and security updates lists.

You can use below pages to get the globally identified vulnerabilities list and CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) list

Now there are 1000s of security vulnerabilities list identified on a daily basis so it is not possible for anyone to check these vulnerabilities list individually and then map them to your environment. Hence we perform security scan on our Linux machine to identify these vulnerabilities list which are impacting our system and then apply security updates list accordingly.

There are a number of tools available which can be used to scan your Linux environment, some of them are

We in our environment have used Nessus and Accunetix to scan our Linux system to identify all the vulnerabilities lists and apply patch accordingly.

Sample Nessus report

Here I cannot put the entire vulnerabilities list report due to contractual reasons but I have put some snippets from the report which shows the list of vulnerable rpms and CVE

How to perform patch management & apply security hotfix (with rollback) in RHEL

Below table shows the list of impacted CVE with their description for kernel rpm which is installed on my RHEL Linux system:

How to perform patch management & apply security hotfix (with rollback) in RHEL

This description list is followed by the list of CVE. This is just a short output what was there in the report

How to perform patch management & apply security hotfix (with rollback) in RHEL

Below table shows the vulnerable kernel rpm and the one from security updates list which we should install to mitigate all the reported vulnerabilities list.

How to perform patch management & apply security hotfix (with rollback) in RHEL

Security Patch Sources

There are several sources for security patches and upgrades. The best source is generally the upgrade repository pre configured for your distribution. However, there is often a delay when distribution developers process updates from other sources, such as the kernel, or services, such as the Apache Web server.

Depending upon your support contract you can request the developers to prioritise the patch delivery timelines. If you’re in a hurry, you can download packages from the Web site directly associated with your service. While not built for your distribution, it can help you get new features into service as quickly as possible.

Now depending upon your environment you can choose for online patch source or an offline patch source. We will discuss both these topics in depth later in this article.

Perform Patch Management in RHEL 6/7/8 Linux

Ideally Linux patch management refers when you have been reported with a mission critical vulnerability (since this article is all about security fixes we will consider vulnerability as our primary root cause) and customer is requesting for an immediate fix to apply patch.

In such case you may deliver a small hotfix which will apply patch on all the nodes as per security updates list in customer environment. Now this security hotfix can apply patch and security updates online as well as offline.

Apply Patch Online

To use online linux patch management your RHEL Linux system must be registered with Red Hat Network mapped with proper subscription channel to get the required security updates. If you have a substantial number of Linux computers, it may be cost effective to buy, configure, and dedicate one or more computers to the patch management task. For example, assume that you have a network of 100 computers, and linux patch management requires that each of these computers downloads 20MB per day. Downloading an additional 2GB per day, every day, can be expensive on business-level Internet connections.

In RHEL 7 and 8 this can be achieved using yum-security plugin, for RHEL 6 you must install yum-plugin-security rpm manually

On RHEL 6

NOTE:
On RHEL system you must have an active subscription to RHN or you can configure a local offline repository using which "yum" package manager can install the provided rpm and it's dependencies.
# yum install yum-plugin-security

List Available Security Erratas

To list all available security erratas without installing them, run:

# yum updateinfo list available
RHSA-2014:1031 Important/Sec. 389-ds-base-1.3.1.6-26.el7_0.x86_64
RHSA-2015:0416 Important/Sec. 389-ds-base-1.3.3.1-13.el7.x86_64
RHBA-2015:0626 bugfix         389-ds-base-1.3.3.1-15.el7_1.x86_64
RHSA-2015:0895 Important/Sec. 389-ds-base-1.3.3.1-16.el7_1.x86_64
RHBA-2015:1554 bugfix         389-ds-base-1.3.3.1-20.el7_1.x86_64
RHBA-2015:1960 bugfix         389-ds-base-1.3.3.1-23.el7_1.x86_64
RHBA-2015:2351 bugfix         389-ds-base-1.3.4.0-19.el7.x86_64
<Output trimmed>

Security Updates List

To list all available rpms from security updates list without installing them, run:

# yum updateinfo list security all
  RHSA-2018:3056 Moderate/Sec.  samba-client-4.8.3-4.el7.x86_64
  RHSA-2019:2099 Moderate/Sec.  samba-client-4.9.1-6.el7.x86_64
i RHSA-2016:0006 Moderate/Sec.  samba-client-libs-4.2.3-11.el7_2.x86_64
i RHSA-2016:0448 Moderate/Sec.  samba-client-libs-4.2.3-12.el7_2.x86_64
i RHSA-2016:0612 Critical/Sec.  samba-client-libs-4.2.10-6.el7_2.x86_64
<Output trimmed>
# yum updateinfo list sec
i RHSA-2014:0678 Important/Sec. kernel-3.10.0-123.1.2.el7.x86_64
i RHSA-2014:0786 Important/Sec. kernel-3.10.0-123.4.2.el7.x86_64
i RHSA-2014:0923 Important/Sec. kernel-3.10.0-123.4.4.el7.x86_64
i RHSA-2014:1023 Important/Sec. kernel-3.10.0-123.6.3.el7.x86_64
i RHSA-2014:1281 Moderate/Sec.  kernel-3.10.0-123.8.1.el7.x86_64
<Output trimmed>

To get a list of rpms from the currently installed security updates list this command can be used:

# yum updateinfo list security installed
RHSA-2014:0678 Important/Sec. kernel-3.10.0-123.1.2.el7.x86_64
RHSA-2014:0786 Important/Sec. kernel-3.10.0-123.4.2.el7.x86_64
RHSA-2014:0923 Important/Sec. kernel-3.10.0-123.4.4.el7.x86_64
RHSA-2014:1023 Important/Sec. kernel-3.10.0-123.6.3.el7.x86_64
<output trimmed>

To know more about the advisory from the security updates list before you apply patch:

[root@rhel-fews-cc ~]# yum updateinfo RHSA-2019:2135
Loaded plugins: langpacks, product-id, search-disabled-repos, subscription-manager

===============================================================================
  Moderate: qt5 security, bug fix, and enhancement update
===============================================================================
  Update ID : RHSA-2019:2135
    Release : 0
       Type : security
     Status : final
     Issued : 2019-08-06 08:04:56 UTC
    Updated : 2019-08-06 08:04:44 UTC       Bugs : 1564000 - Rebase qt5-qtbase to 5.9.7
            : 1564001 - Rebase qt5-qtcanvas3d to 5.9.7
            : 1564002 - Rebase qt5-qtconnectivity to 5.9.7
            : 1564003 - Rebase qt5-qtdeclarative to 5.9.7
            : 1564004 - Rebase qt5-qtdoc to 5.9.7
            : 1564006 - Rebase qt5-qtgraphicaleffects to 5.9.7
            : 1564007 - Rebase qt5-qtimageformats to 5.9.7
            : 1564008 - Rebase qt5-qtlocation to 5.9.7

			<output trimmed>
            : refer to the CVE page(s) listed in the References
            : section.
            :
            : Additional Changes:
            :
            : For detailed information on changes in this
            : release, see the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.7
            : Release Notes linked from the References section.
   Severity : Moderate
updateinfo info done
<Output trimmed>

If you want to apply patch only for one specific advisory:

# yum update --advisory=RHSA-2014:0159

To list all available security updates list with verbose descriptions of the issues they apply to:

# yum info-sec
===============================================================================
  GeoIP bug fix and enhancement update
===============================================================================
  Update ID : RHBA-2019:2224
    Release : 0
       Type : bugfix
     Status : final
     Issued : 2019-08-06 08:14:36 UTC
    Updated : 2019-08-06 08:14:34 UTCDescription : GeoIP is a C library that enables the user to find the country
            : that any IP address or host name originates from.
            : It uses a file-based database that can be,
            : optionally, updated on a weekly basis by
            : installing the GeoIP-update package.
            :
            : For detailed information on changes in this
            : release, see the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.7
            : Release Notes linked from the References section.
            :
            : Users of GeoIP are advised to upgrade to these
            : updated packages.
   Severity : None
<Output trimmed>

View and Install Vulnerabilities list with CVE

To view Vulnerabilities List or CVEs which affect the system with:

# yum updateinfo list cves
 CVE-2018-14633   Moderate/Sec.  kernel-3.10.0-957.1.3.el7.x86_64
 CVE-2018-14646   Moderate/Sec.  kernel-3.10.0-957.1.3.el7.x86_64
 CVE-2018-18397   Important/Sec. kernel-3.10.0-957.5.1.el7.x86_64
 CVE-2018-18559   Important/Sec. kernel-3.10.0-957.5.1.el7.x86_64
 CVE-2018-9568    Important/Sec. kernel-3.10.0-957.10.1.el7.x86_64
 CVE-2018-17972   Important/Sec. kernel-3.10.0-957.10.1.el7.x86_64
<utput trimmed>

To install packages impacting a certain CVE Number

# yum update --cve CVE-2008-0947

Update all available security updates list

Run yum update security in the below syntax to download and apply all available security updates list from Red Hat Network hosted or Red Hat Network Satellite:

# yum -y update --security
IMPORTANT NOTE:
It will install the last version available of any package with at least one security errata thus can install non-security erratas if they provide a more updated version of the package.

To only install the packages that have a security errata use

# yum update-minimal --security -y

Apply Patch Offline

Most of the production environment are not connected to Internet hence online patch management is not possible. So in such cases there are two possible approach taken by customers.

NOTE:
Such configuration requires you to have fast physical servers with good CPU, memory speed and most importantly large storage device to store all these security updates
  • Create a security hotfix with all the packages. This hotfix will contain scripts to create local repo and update the packages locally on individual nodes or on some HTTP server. With this you do not need access to external network in your production environment and is the most secure method to perform patch management and apply security hotfix.

Steps to create offline security hotfix

Based on Nessus scan report you will get the list of CVE or vulnerabilities list which are impacting your Linux node. So you can download the rpms which fixes the respective CVE as explained under Online Patch Management

Place all the rpms from security updates list under one location on any Linux node, for example in our case we will keep all the rpms under /tmp/rhel_security_updates

# mkdir /tmp/rhel_security_updates

Next once you have the list of rpms which you need to download, you can then download these rpms from RHN along with their dependencies and keep it under the same path to apply patch.

Next execute createrepo as shown below

# cd /tmp/rhel_security_updates

# createrepo .

This will create the necessary repodata files required to create an offline repo

Now our repo directory is ready to apply patch offline (security hotfix). You can create a script which can now do the below list of tasks

  • Create repo file required to create a repo on individual node. A sample content is placed below
[rhel74_updates]
name=rhel74_updates
baseurl=file:///tmp/rhel_security_updates
gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
gpgkey = file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-redhat-release
  • Update all the rpms using (yum update -y)
  • Verify if the update was successful

Perform Rollback or Fallback after applying security hotfix

Now it is very important that in production environment you have an option available to rollback or fallback. So after you apply patch, to fallback or rollback to the older working state of your RHEL Linux host you must know the last state.

Here I mean that assuming the existing (before you apply patch or security hotfix) your RHEL system had 500 rpms then after fallback it is expected that you return the system to same set with 500 rpms.

Now before applying security hotfix I had below list of kernel rpms so after fallback also I should have same set of rpms

# rpm -qa | grep kernel
kernel-tools-libs-3.10.0-957.21.3.el7.x86_64
kernel-3.10.0-957.21.3.el7.x86_64
kernel-tools-3.10.0-957.21.3.el7.x86_64

This is really tricky to handle because with every security update you install on your RHEL Linux host, there are a number of dependencies and additional rpms which gets installed.

Now for example I wish to update samba-common rpm due to some vulnerability. Currently my RHEL system has samba-common-4.8.3-4.el7.noarch

# rpm -qa | grep samba
samba-common-libs-4.8.3-4.el7.x86_64
samba-common-4.8.3-4.el7.noarch
samba-client-libs-4.8.3-4.el7.x86_64

While there is a security update available with samba-common-4.9.1-6.el7.noarch

# yum updateinfo list sec | grep samba
RHSA-2019:2099 Moderate/Sec.  samba-client-libs-4.9.1-6.el7.x86_64
RHSA-2019:2099 Moderate/Sec.  samba-common-4.9.1-6.el7.noarch
RHSA-2019:2099 Moderate/Sec.  samba-common-libs-4.9.1-6.el7.x86_64

So I plan to update samba-common rpm

# yum update samba-common

<Output trimmed>
Dependencies Resolved

=============================================================================================
 Package                  Arch          Version              Repository                 Size
=============================================================================================
Updating:
 samba-common             noarch        4.9.1-6.el7          rhel-7-server-rpms        209 k
Updating for dependencies:
 libsmbclient             x86_64        4.9.1-6.el7          rhel-7-server-rpms        137 k
 libtevent                x86_64        0.9.37-1.el7         rhel-7-server-rpms         40 k
 libwbclient              x86_64        4.9.1-6.el7          rhel-7-server-rpms        111 k
 samba-client-libs        x86_64        4.9.1-6.el7          rhel-7-server-rpms        4.9 M
 samba-common-libs        x86_64        4.9.1-6.el7          rhel-7-server-rpms        170 k

As you see due to dependency reason I was supposed to also update additional rpms. But there is no such guarantee that while performing downgrade of samba-common to 4.8.3-4.el7.noarch we will get the same set of dependency list.

In such cases you can manually download the individual rpm → identify the dependencies and then downgrade the rpm using "rpm" command. But this is very hectic and not recommended.

I recommend using LVM Snapshot feature to perform fallback of such security hotfix. In such case if you wish to fallback then you can just revert back the using the LVM snapshot.
Starting RHEL 7.7 and RHEL 8 you can also boot your RHEL system using the LVM snapshot using BOOM.

It is the most reliable solution for such use cases. Although to perform LVM snapshot you need some mandatory prerequisites which I have explained in detail in a separate article.

Now showing you a step by step guide to perform LVM snapshot will be out of scope for this article so I have added hyperlinks to my other articles where I have explained this in detail with examples.

Lastly I hope the steps from the article to get an overview on linux apply patch, security errata, security updates list and performing linux patch management on RHEL Linux was helpful. So, let me know your suggestions and feedback using the comment section.

Deepak Prasad

He is the founder of GoLinuxCloud and brings over a decade of expertise in Linux, Python, Go, Laravel, DevOps, Kubernetes, Git, Shell scripting, OpenShift, AWS, Networking, and Security. With extensive experience, he excels in various domains, from development to DevOps, Networking, and Security, ensuring robust and efficient solutions for diverse projects. You can reach out to him on his LinkedIn profile or join on Facebook page.

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6 thoughts on “How to check security updates list & perform linux patch management RHEL 6/7/8”

  1. Hi

    thanks for the information for patching and vulnerability fixing in Redhat 6/7/8 .
    can you please tell me what we need to do in case of centos 7 / 8 ?

    Regards
    Manoj Raul

    Reply
    • Thanks for your feedback, the steps would be the same. The only additional thing required in RHEL is that you need to register your environment but in CentOS you should be getting these automatically. If you face any issues then please do let me know here for me to check further as we have RHEL in our environment so I have not explicitly tested CentOS

      Reply
  2. Hi Manoj
    So I updated my system with yum clean all; yum exclude=kernel* and my system went from Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 7.7 (Maipo) to Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 7.8 (Maipo). If a reboot the system, will I have a healthy system. I though that only by updating the kernel is when I will update a minor release update.
    Thanks

    Reply
    • Hi Luis,

      This is a little tricky question. We have to understand that a minor release is made up of a bunch of rpms and cannot be defined by just one rpm. So just by updating a kernel (or updating all except kernel) will not tell you if you are at RHEL 7.7 or 7.8
      The file which shows the release information is updated by redhat-release-X-XX rpm so if you just install this rpm from RHEL 7.8 then you system would show newer minor release but in real there will be many rpms which will be still from RHEL 7.7
      The best approach to handle such minor updates are that you bind your subscription to respective release and either perform yum update or download the rpms locally and then choose the list of rpms you wish to update.
      # subscription-manager release –list
      +——————————————-+
      Available Releases
      +——————————————-+
      7.0
      7.1
      7.2
      7.3
      7.4
      7.5
      7.6
      7.7
      7.8
      7Server

      # subscription-manager release –set=7.8
      # subscription-manager release –show

      Follow below Red Hat solution article for more information
      https://access.redhat.com/solutions/238533

      Reply
    • No, you should first upgrade the server to rhel 8.x as the rpm syntax changes to el8
      Moreover there are critical changes between both releases

      Reply

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