Upgrade-UX is an open source framework developed to assist in patching and/or updating Unix Operating Systems in a consistent and repeatable way. Especially in the industry it is forbidden just to run yum update (on Linux) to update your Linux system, therefore, upgrade-ux may proof to be a handy tool to guide you through the patching and/or update process as it follows a track you control (evidence gathering, pre/post executing of scripts, logging, and so on).
Upgrade-ux is completely written in Korn Shell which is widely available on all UNIX Operating Systems from Linux, HP-UX, Solaris, AIX, and others. The nice thing about upgrade-ux is that the each OS follows its own track (via a directory tree structure) so they do not influence each other.
Currently, only the HP-UX and Linux (CentOS/RHEL) tree are fully populated. People who ever worked with Relax-and-Recover will immediately recognize the internals as it is an exact clone (however, reworked to make it fully Korn Shell aware).
Upgrade-UX has a wide range of features:
- Open Source with a GPL v3 license
- Free to use and pull requests are kindly accepted
- Simple to use
- Has a preview mode (to dry-run an upgrade without doing it) and an upgrade mode
- Is customisable via
local.confconfiguration file - Is written in standard Korn Shell (which makes it highly portable)
- Is a complete modular framework where a script can be placed (directory structures according OS type)
- Is UNIX Operating System independent as OS specific tasks reside in their own directory structures
- HP-UX is fully implemented (and has been used for over 4 years without much problems for one customer)
- Linux is fully implemented, but can still be easily extended (used by one customer to quarterly patch)
- AIX and SunOS are not (yet) implemented
- Is easy extendable with your own scripts
- The
upgrade-uxcommand leaves a trace in its own log file - Running in preview or upgrade mode always creates evidence files
- Has a man page
- Has user documentation (you are reading part of it)
- Can be used to install patch bundles of previous years with the YEAR variable
- Does understand Serviceguard clusters (HP-UX and Linux)
- Can be programmed to bail out on settings you think are too serious to continue
- Can trigger remote alarms, syslog, monitors.
- Can force a clean reboot before patching or upgrade can start (definable)
- Can do a basis health check of your system - it is all up to you
- Has excellent support by its author (contact me for consultancy or programming tasks)
- The support and development of the Upgrade-UX project takes place on Github
Author : Gratien D'haese
