thought's about upgrading to RedHat 8.0

Jim Levie jim at entrophy-free.net
Wed Oct 2 21:37:09 EDT 2002


On Wed, 2002-10-02 at 17:15, Bryntez wrote:
> Hi list...
> 
> Regarding: Redhat 8.0 is out..... 
> 
> I have a perfectly (at least I belive so) working Cyrus imap
> production server running on a RedHat 7.3 platform.
> 
> But the latest development in security and virus related issues, 
> it looks like I should upgrade this system to RedHat 8.0. I'm
> thinking especially about the ssl port 433 stuff (slapper.worm)
> 
> We're running Cyrus Sasl 2.1.5 and Cyrus Imap 2.1.5 with 
> MySQL and Postfix systems, providing users/domain dbase and smtp
> services with smtp sasl authentication. I've also put in a suitable
> amount of effort into the Apache php system, to customise the 
> various utilities needed for a successful webmail solution.
> 
> You know - when you have a working box - you don't want to mess
> things up by any unessesary software upgrades, which can give
> you a lot of headache outwards the evening.... :-)
> 
I'd say that it's entirely too soon to consider using 8.0 as a server.
In a few months when the release matures and the holes have been found
and fixed in the 8.0 errata it might be time to consider 8.0 as a
server.

Are you using a 'home grown' Apache 2.x or the 1.3.x version that is
included with 7.3. If the later is the case then you might find
incompatibilities with the 2.x version of Apache furnished with 8.0. And
that might be another good reason to defer the use of 8.0 for a while.
Oh yeah, 8.0 also ships with Perl 5.8 which might impact your use if you
make much use of Perl & its modules.

Security related updates to any version of RedHat (or any other OS for
that matter) can hardly be considered as "unessesary software upgrades"
for any system that could be the subject of a malicious attack. If you
haven't installed all of the 7.3 security errata and this box is exposed
to the Internet, then I'd say you are living on borrowed time... If you
haven't already be cracked and just aren't aware of it.

-- 
The instructions said to use Windows 98 or better, so I installed
RedHat.





More information about the Info-cyrus mailing list