Re: [CentOS] Update question

2009-10-14 Thread Benjamin Donnachie
2009/10/14 John R. Dennison :
>        Because advising someone to run with known vulnerabilities
>        is conducive to maintaining the integrity of critical
>        systems?

If those vulnerabilities put your servers at risk in the environment
that you use them, then that would qualify as *need* to upgrade (and
fast).

>        I've been seeing this mentality a lot recently, and while
>        in some corner-cases it does make sense, for the majority
>        of users it does not and leaves them open to pain and suffering
>        in the future.

On the one hand I'm quite fortunate that our critical infrastructure
is completely isolated but on the other I'm rather unfortunate with
the requirement for near constant uptime with ageing hardware and no
spare cash - until things go wrong...

I also monitor various lists for vulnerability updates.

>        Update once in a while after testing in a properly configured
>        test environment and you will, in the long run, be much happier.

Completely agree! :)

Ben
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Re: [CentOS] Update question

2009-10-14 Thread John R. Dennison
On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 07:51:27PM +0100, Benjamin Donnachie wrote:
> 
> Do you *need* to upgrade?  If the machines are running anything
> critical, I would be tempted to leave them with 5.2.

Because advising someone to run with known vulnerabilities
is conducive to maintaining the integrity of critical
systems?

I've been seeing this mentality a lot recently, and while
in some corner-cases it does make sense, for the majority
of users it does not and leaves them open to pain and suffering
in the future.

Update once in a while after testing in a properly configured
test environment and you will, in the long run, be much happier.




John

-- 
DMR: So fsck was originally called something else.
Q: What was it called?
DMR: Well, the second letter was different.
   Dennis M. Ritchie, Usenix, June 18, 1998.


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Re: [CentOS] Update question

2009-10-14 Thread Ron Loftin

On Wed, 2009-10-14 at 19:51 +0100, Benjamin Donnachie wrote:
> 2009/10/14 Ron Loftin :
> > I have some customer machines that have not been updated for some time,
> > and are still on CentOS 5.2.
> 
> Do you *need* to upgrade?  If the machines are running anything
> critical, I would be tempted to leave them with 5.2.
> 

That is a valid question.  As these systems are Internet-facing boxes
providing firewall/VPN/DNS services, I do need to keep them as current
as customer management will allow for bug fixes and security patches.
Everything on them is either from the CentOS repos or one of the more
reliable 3rd-party repos such as RPMforge, so I'm hoping for a
manageable amount of issues here.

And yes, I DO test in a non-production environment before I deploy.  I
have lost my taste for tossing stuff into production without checking it
out in advance.  I'm a firm believer in the old Reagan-era philosophy of
"Trust, but verify". ;>

-- 
Ron Loftin  relof...@twcny.rr.com

"God, root, what is difference ?"   Piter from UserFriendly

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Re: [CentOS] Update question

2009-10-14 Thread Benjamin Donnachie
2009/10/14 Ron Loftin :
> I have some customer machines that have not been updated for some time,
> and are still on CentOS 5.2.

Do you *need* to upgrade?  If the machines are running anything
critical, I would be tempted to leave them with 5.2.

Ben
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Re: [CentOS] Update question

2009-10-14 Thread Kwan Lowe
On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 2:36 PM, Ron Loftin  wrote:
>
> I have some customer machines that have not been updated for some time,
> and are still on CentOS 5.2.  While reading the release notes for 5.4, I
> have not yet seen anything that looks like it needs attention, but are
> there any known issues or "gotchas" related to moving directly from 5.2
> to 5.4?
>
> Comments, pointers, things to look for are all welcome.
>

On a few virtual systems I moved directly from 5.2 stock to 5.3
completely updated. There were no issues to speak of except that I ran
out of space in /var and had some trouble with the LVMs not resizing
properly. In short, I had to take the system down to single user mode
to unmount /var and resize the journal. Once that was complete, the
update went fine.

I did have a glitch some months ago moving from a 5.2 with some minor
patches to 5.3.  I lost the network connections to the Xen virtual
systems and found out that the default MAC address of the virtual
ethernet conflicted with the hardware address of the Linksys adapter.
Moving from 5.2 to 5.4 may hit the same issue.
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