a bit more on the security page?
Sorry if this is the wrong forum for this. I was looking at
http://www.debian.com/security, and in particular, the following:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You may find it convenient to use apt to get the latest security updates. This
requires a line such as:
...
in your /etc/apt/sources.list file.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Security is a big differentiator over Windows, especially recently (ILOVEYOU,
CodeRed I-N, etc). I've been a programmer for many years, and know (basically)
how to use apt, and it's served me powerfully. However, the bit on the
security page, I felt, was just shy of being complete; imagining myself as a
strapped-for-time entry-level sysadmin who knows how to search the web and use
'apt-get install' and 'apt-get remove' but little more, I felt it was just
short of complete.
I'd do one of two things:
* Add the following:
This will automatically consult the security update site for any new software
downloaded via apt or dselect. (After you've added this line, running
apt-get update; apt-get upgrade
should bring already-installed software up to date with the latest security
updates.)
or
* Make the http://security.debian.org line default in sources.list. I'll bet
there was a good reason this wasn't done, (possibly for export reasons,
though). Perhaps this is already being done and I screwed something up during
the install.
I think that adding either of these would give the sysadmin (well me, anyway) a
sense of, well, security that they've done everything wrt installed software
and can write that part off in a manner of speaking. This is especially true
if someone reads about (say) an Apache vulnerability (and has never worried
about security before), desperately rushes to the debian security web page and
needs a quick, unambiguous description of what to do. Since the process to
update security is very straightforward already, putting the couple extra
instructions on the web page seems like a good idea to me.
Thanks,
Krishna
P.S I'm a recent convert (and subsequent evangelist) of Debian. Not having
gone into detail of how things work under Debian, it definitely beats RedHat
for being a 'hands-off' distribution. Installations all go into specific
directories, so a 'rehash' is all that's needed to continue, a one-line
(apt-get) mechanism for software installation and removal, and a browser
(dselect) utility to see and search (and show to other people - very important)
everything you can get. Once I lick my allergies/chemical sensitivity and get
some energy back, I myself want to contribute to the Debian effort.
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