Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote:
Martin Schulze <joey@infodrom.org> writes:I wonder if the maintainers of . virus scanners . spam filters . security scanners . log analysers . intrusion detection systems . what I forgot have made up their mind on how they will update clients that have installed sarge, once it is released and only barely accepts updates.It seems to me that updated data files for these programs belong in the security archive.
For virus definitions this seems impractical to me: Firstly the maintainer would have to check the vendor's site once or twice a day for updates and upload them to Debian. I don't think any maintainer would like to accept this job. O.K., this could be automated to some degree, but you still have to sign the package before it is uploaded.
Second, this would introduce an extra delay of up to several days before the virus definitions finally reach Debian's users: If you check the vendor's site twice a day, virus definitions may already be 12 hours old, when you get them. Then, after packaging, signing and uploading they will rest in the incoming queue for up to 24 hours (if my assumption is correct that packages are installed once a day), after that the servers have to be sync'ed which takes I-don't-know-how-long. Finally, until the individual Debian user runs apt-get update && apt-get upgrade, another undetermined period of time may pass by.
For virus definitions, such a delay would be unacceptable.Compared to that, running f-prot's included update script takes only 1-2 seconds to complete (and some seconds more if an update is found).
Thanks, Johannes