Broken URL for epel-release, strategy for the future

[Tony Yarusso]

So as background, our product's installation script contains a line
which reads:
rpm -Uvh
http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/i386/epel-release-5-3.noarch.rp...

This week, we had a customer contact us complaining because our product
didn't work.  Well, it turned out the cause was the deletion of that
file when
http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/i386/epel-release-5-4.noarch.rp... was posted.

The point being, there needs to be a URL that does not get broken at
random, so that people have something they can rely on.  I don't want to
have to check your repo every day to see if the file happened to change,
and then scramble to release a new version of our product with one line
updated in the installer script - that's silly.

One possibility would be to manually define HTTP redirects in the web
server configuration.  Another would be a generic
epel-release-5.noarch.rpm that was a symlink to the current sub-version.
I don't know what would be best for you as far as implementation, but
the regardless the result needs to be that someone can make a request
for epel-release-5.3.noarch.rpm and get a successful response.  The
solution you come up with should make any such link valid until RHEL 5
reaches EOL.

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Wed, Sep 1, 2010 at 13:37, Tony Yarusso  wrote:
> So as background, our product's installation script contains a line
> which reads:
> rpm -Uvh
> http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/i386/epel-release-5-3.noarch.rp...

Hi tony.

Thanks for the feedback and reminding us know that some people rely on
us. We will see if our push stuff can create a more permanent link you
could aim at to get the release better.

[Dennis Gilmore]

On Wednesday, September 01, 2010 03:56:04 pm Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 1, 2010 at 13:37, Tony Yarusso  wrote:
> > So as background, our product's installation script contains a line
> > which reads:
> > rpm -Uvh
> > http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/i386/epel-release-5-3.noarch
> > .rpm
>
> Hi tony.
>
> Thanks for the feedback and reminding us know that some people rely on
> us. We will see if our push stuff can create a more permanent link you
> could aim at to get the release better.

there is not an easy way to provide a permanent link.

the best fix would be for your script to write out a yum repo file for epel and 
do a yum install of epel-release. This also removes the single point of 
failure that is the single download.fedora.redhat.com server.  alternatively 
you could have a copy of epel-release that you host on your own servers  then 
if we update the package a yum update will get the latest version.  however i 
do believe using yum and the epel repo is the most reliable way to move 
forward.

I guess you could also use rsync or ftp to get the latest copy and install it 
also.  but again using the mirrorlist and a yum repo to me seems best

Dennis

[Steve Traylen]

On Wed, Sep 1, 2010 at 11:12 PM, Dennis Gilmore  wrote:
> On Wednesday, September 01, 2010 03:56:04 pm Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
> > On Wed, Sep 1, 2010 at 13:37, Tony Yarusso  wrote:
> > > So as background, our product's installation script contains a line
> > > which reads:
> > > rpm -Uvh
> > > http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/i386/epel-release-5-3.noarch
> > > .rpm
> >
> > Hi tony.
> >
> > Thanks for the feedback and reminding us know that some people rely on
> > us. We will see if our push stuff can create a more permanent link you
> > could aim at to get the release better.
>
> there is not an easy way to provide a permanent link.

http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/i386/repoview/epel-release.html

is a pretty good permanent link along with some instructions.

"Please install the latest epel-release RPM from this page"

Probably offer links to the i386 and x86_64 page just to avoid the obvious
support question.

Steve.
> the best fix would be for your script to write out a yum repo file for epel and
> do a yum install of epel-release. This also removes the single point of
> failure that is the single download.fedora.redhat.com server.  alternatively
> you could have a copy of epel-release that you host on your own servers  then
> if we update the package a yum update will get the latest version.  however i
> do believe using yum and the epel repo is the most reliable way to move
> forward.
>
> I guess you could also use rsync or ftp to get the latest copy and install it
> also.  but again using the mirrorlist and a yum repo to me seems best
>
> Dennis
>
> epel-devel-list mailing list
> [e-mail]
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/epel-devel-list

[Tony Yarusso]

On Wed, 2010-09-01 at 23:20 +0200, Steve Traylen wrote:
> > there is not an easy way to provide a permanent link.
>
> http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/i386/repoview/epel-release.html
>
> is a pretty good permanent link along with some instructions.
>
> "Please install the latest epel-release RPM from this page"

Considering that this is done by script, not by human, no instructions
necessary.  I suppose we can wget the source of that page, and grep out
the URL.  A bit inefficient, but I guess it will work until there's a
real solution.

[Tony Yarusso]

On Wed, 2010-09-01 at 16:12 -0500, Dennis Gilmore wrote:
> I guess you could also use rsync or ftp to get the latest copy and install it 
> also.  but again using the mirrorlist and a yum repo to me seems best

Considering that the entire point of the package is to create a yum repo
file, doesn't it seem a little bit silly to write a yum repo file
manually in order to install it?

[Joshua J. Kugler]

On Wednesday 01 September 2010, Dennis Gilmore elucidated thus:
> On Wednesday, September 01, 2010 03:56:04 pm Stephen John Smoogen

wrote:
> > On Wed, Sep 1, 2010 at 13:37, Tony Yarusso

wrote:
> > > So as background, our product's installation script contains a
> > > line which reads:
> > > rpm -Uvh
> > > http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/i386/epel-release-5-
> > > 3.noarch .rpm
> >
> > Hi tony.
> >
> > Thanks for the feedback and reminding us know that some people rely
> > on us. We will see if our push stuff can create a more permanent
> > link you could aim at to get the release better.
>
> there is not an easy way to provide a permanent link.

<incredulous>Really!?</incredulous> I have seen *lots* of projects 
provide a link in their list of download files to 
project_name.latest.tar.gz which is a symlink to the latest version of 
the tar ball.  Couldn't a script be added somewhere which basically 
does this:

(mind the wrap)

ln -sf `ls -tr /path/to/rpms/epel-release-*.noarch .rpm|
tail -1` /path/to/epel-release-latest.noarch.rpm

That seems trivial.

j