System Updates on Linux - can we have it use sudo

Question

Note: I am not a Linux guy, but I am trying to get Open Manage Essentials to work with our Linux servers. I have been pretty successful at installing updates on our Windows servers using OME.  I just got a hold of a test Linux server, and had problems installing updates on it. I supplied my own credentials on the Linux server when configuring the update task.  The task failed, and I figured it was because my account didnt have permissions to run the task on the server, because it would have to be elvated first. I attempted to install updates by providing root credentials, and it also failed.  Just to test things out I attempted to ssh to the server as root and could not.  One of our Linux guys told me that root is not usually allowed to ssh as a security measure.  As a test, I allowed ssh for root temporarily, created a new update task, and then the updates installed successfully. To account for the fact that most Linux systems do not allow root to ssh in, is there any way to specify for the update task to use sudo to allow the credntials that are provided to be elevated? Also, how are the updates installed on Linux?  Our Linux guy thinks that a yum install is being performed and that it is getting the package from the Dell repository.  I told him that I did not think that was the case, as we are using Repository Manager and have a local repository.  We checked and yum is not pointed to a repository on our OME server.  I think it is not using yum, but copying down the package from the OME / respoitory server and then installing it.

DELL-Abhijit P · Answer

Hi,

Thanks for your post. Currently OME needs the root account to have ssh access to send updates to the Linux servers.

You are right. OME does not use yum repository and will be getting the updates from the Repository Manager local repository.

We are looking at improving this functionality in future versions of OME to allow non root users to install updates by making use of sudo.

You can use yum on the Linus servers outside of OME to get the updates if the repository is setup on those servers.

Regards

Abhijit

Dell OpenManage Essentials

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