On Thu Sep 25, 2003 at 09:40:16PM -0400, Albert Whale wrote:

Can you fix your reply-to's as well?  It's irksome that replies aren't going
to the list.

> >>I am running a System Scan on Several machines.  The interesting ones
> >>to me are Linux Mandrake 8.2 and 9.1.
> >>
> >>The issue here is that the Scanning Tools (here I am using Nessus),
> >>expect a specific reply in order to accept or reject the applications
> >>which are communicating on the Server.
> >>
> >>Even though the Mandrake OpenSSH software is upgraded to the latest
> >>version (openssh-server-3.6.1p2-1.1.82mdk) available for the package
> >>(from Mandrake), this still does not reflect the package version
> >>supportted for openssh (here being 3.7.1 and above).
> >>
> >>So how do we simplify this Version Numbering and conform with the
> >>Expected results?
> >
> > We don't :) Check the other openssh related threads of this past
> > week or so...you'll see Vincent's reasoning as of why there's not
> > and will not be a 3.7.1 in mdk. 
> >
> Thanks I'll do that, but this makes the jobs of Justify the Mandrake 
> Package harder to swallow.  Perhaps Gentoo is following the standards??

Ummm... what standards?  I didn't realize that upgrading to the latest
(broken) version of a software (three times) was a standard?

Seriously, there are darn good reasons for not jumping on the upgrade
bandwagon like Gentoo does.  For right or wrong, this method of not jumping
to the latest version of something has saved us a *lot* of grief.  Remember
the openssl vulns?  Did you *really* want us to upgrade to the latest
version of openssl and have to recompile and re-ship everything that
depended on it?  Sure, let's turn openssl into a 350MB+ download because we
have to rebuild parts of KDE amongst many other things just so that nessus
doesn't complain.  Give me a break.

Justifying the Mandrake package?  Please!  Justify to whom?  Your boss?  Are
they seeing some fancy table on Red Hat's site that indicates package names,
CVE names, and RHSA advisory numbers?  Maybe SuSE has this fancy table?  Or
is it just Gentoo?  No, wait.  Gentoo doesn't have a fancy table.  They just
make you upgrade three times (from *source* mind you) to get the thing
fixed.

Thanks, but I'll take the table-less backport that only needs to be done
once and use *that* as justification, thank you very much.  Bean counters
who want excel spreadsheets really need to wake up.  A little graph isn't
justification for a "package" or distribution.  The quality of the
distribution and what it produces for *your* protection should be
justification enough.

But, hey, if you felt like recompiling openssh three times in two days on
your Gentoo boxes and your boss figured that was a good investment, all the
power to you.

Now that you think about this a little more, don't you just want to come to
the conclusion that this is all a little silly and that using a chart as
justification for an OS seems a little... crazy?

-- 
MandrakeSoft Security; http://www.mandrakesecure.net/
Online Security Resource Book; http://linsec.ca/
"lynx -source http://linsec.ca/vdanen.asc | gpg --import"
{FE6F2AFD : 88D8 0D23 8D4B 3407 5BD7  66F9 2043 D0E5 FE6F 2AFD}

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