[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: ftp.us.debian.org signature problems?



Chet Murthy wrote:
> Today I was updating, and I noticed that the testing/Release file has
> a bad signature, and that that signature is -different- from the
> signature on the same file from http.us.debian.org.
> 
> I wouldn't know if this is innocuous or dangerous -- figured I should
> report it.

Yes, and it's a good idea to not continue installing when this happens,
even though the chances are it's a mirror inconsistency and not a
security issue.

http.us.debian.org has 5 mirrors behind it, if any one of them breaks
and apt happens to pick it to use, you lose.

Today's breakage is on the mirror at ip 128.101.240.212, which has:

[   ] Release                 12-Mar-2006 15:13    35k
[   ] Release.gpg             10-Mar-2006 15:14     1k

Obviously a Release.gpg file created 2 days ago isn't going to match
today's Release file. I'm not sure how this happened, but apparently the
new one was not mirrored in. Perhaps it will be fixed tomorrow.

I've personally stopped using the http.us.debian.org mirror rotation,
and just choose one mirror in the set, such as saens.debian.org. Of course
since the mirror that broke today _is_ saens.debian.org, it obviously
doesn't solve all these problems, but it makes tracking down the
breakage easier since you only have to look on one mirror. And can
change to another one, like mirrors.kernel.org, if the one you're using
breaks.

I'd be especially leery of using http.us.debian.org if I had more than
one machine using it behind the same dns server. Round robin dns works
by the server giving out the next address on the list to each client, so
if you update multiple machines it becomes more likely that one will try
to use the bad mirror. And it's nearly 5 times as likely that any one of
the mirrors in http.us.debian.org will be broken than that any single
mirror will be broken..

-- 
see shy jo

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: Digital signature


Reply to: