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Re: Patched sendmail? testing?



At 02:04 PM 3/4/2003 -0500, stan wrote:
On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 05:02:10PM +0000, Colin Watson wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 11:32:34AM -0500, stan wrote:
> > On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 06:15:02AM -0800, Marc Wilson wrote:
> > > On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 08:37:02AM -0500, stan wrote:
> > > > I did apt-get update and apt-get dist-upgrade on some of my
> > > > machines running testing, and I was surprised to not [pull patched
> > > > sendmail binaries, based upon the announcement of a vulnerability
> > > > in it yesterday.
> > >
> > > Testing doesn't have security updates, and has never been advertised as
> > > having security updates.  Are you volunteering?
> > >
> > > <sigh> Someone else running testing in a production environment.
> >
> > And my choices are?
> >
> > As I see them.
> >
> > 1. Run unstable, and have a broken system more often than not.
> > 2. Run stable and have 1970's versions of software/
>
> That's a hopeless exaggeration; I run stable happily on my home server.
> Anyway, if you run testing you need to manage the security yourself by
> backporting patches. I don't believe anyone will ever have told you
> otherwise.
>
> (It's not an ideal situation, true. However, it's reality.)
>
Not idael at all. As a matter of fact, it makes the whole concept of a
testing release pretty useless. Look:

13:58:15 up 249 days,  5:48,  1 user,  load average: 0.35, 0.32, 0.36

root@phsepi1:~# cat /etc/debian_version
testing/unstable

This is a amchien providing production related process control information
in a paper mill. The uptime would be longer, but I had a bug in my software
that was generating zombies, and ahd to reboot to clean up that mess.

That's certainly "stab;e"enough for em. And it gets apt-get dist-upgraded
pretty much every weekday morning.

So, we have a pretty "stable" release good enough "IMHO" for "real
production" work. But we choose to cripple it by not providing security
updtaes?

Sounds like bad allocation of resources to me!

Sounds like that machine could function without internet access and therefore probably not need to be concerned about this sendmail vulnerability. If it does need outside access, say for allowing you to remotely reach it, does it need to run sendmail also ?? Couldn't a smaller, simpler SMTP app work okay ??

I guess this particular issue with sendmail patches being available in testing isn't your real complaint though...

Hall



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