Linux Repository Server: Implementing and Hardening Step by Step

One of the highly critical roles in computers security maintenance is patch management, this paper discusses the process of implementing softwares and measures in order successfully accomplish such role. The main idea is to setup a web server on local network providing RPM1 repository structure for Linux2 clients, thus resulting in less bandwidth consumption and rapidly software updates. The content is focused on Fedora3 Linux operating system, but it will be useful users of any Linux distribution based on RPM package management system. By using commonly deployed solutions such as Apache web server and Fedora distribution tools, this document will explain how to easily implement Linux patch management scheme. All steps needed to build and secure network services as well as the operating system will be covered in details. This paper is intended to be a good reference for everyone who needs to maintain several Linux machines with its software and patches updated by using a simple and uniform way.