In an environment where all nodes have all repos configured, including Lustre client and server repos (i.e. in an effort to keep per-node-type configuration differences to a minimum) it is impossible to install the patchless lustre client.

That is because the lustre (i.e. the server) RPM Provides: lustre-client and seems to always override the lustre-client RPM request/selection when trying to yum install lustre-client.

With the server having a Provides: that is the same name as the lustre-client RPM there becomes no way to ask for the patchless client and not get overridden into installing the server.

I propose renaming the lustre-client RPM patchless-lustre-client (or some other suitable name) and having both the patchless-lustre-client and lustre RPMs Provide: lustre-client. Having both packages Provide: lustre-client should preserve the existing behaviour so there should be no change required in existing environments because yum install lustre-client should continue to behave exactly as it did before.