[gentoo-server] Automating security updates on non-cutting edge server

[Andy Mayer]

Hi there,

I've been using Gentoo as my desktop platform for about 3 months now and
I really like it's power and flexibility. But  I usually use Red Hat 7.3
on our production servers as I really like the Red Hat Network up2date
functionality which automatically applies security patches without
needing human intervention.

Basically, I am the sort of guy that wants to spend minimal time
maintaining production servers that are not cutting edge so that I can
concentrate my time on development work.

But with Red Hat dropping Red Hat Network support for RH7.3, I am
seriously considering changing our server platform over to Gentoo.

Our server requirements are not cutting edge; we only need Apache, PHP.
Perl and mySql (and maybe later some mail services). My question is: if
I move our server platform to Gentoo, is there an automated way of
applying security patches to the currently installed software that I can
"fire and forget" without fear of things breaking big time.?

I know this question is not very focused, but I wanted to start a
discussion as to the best methods of automating security updates for
non-cutting edge Apache/MySQl/PHP servers using Gentoo.

Thanks for your help!

Andy

PS. Is there a web-archive of this list that I can search?

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