On Sun, Feb 16, 2003 at 07:46:09PM -0600, Lynn Avants said: > On Sunday 16 February 2003 05:47 pm, Simon Blake wrote: > > > What I was asking was what real,tangible benefit write protecting the > > boot media gives you, and is that benefit worth anything against the > > extra hassle of having a write protected boot media. > > OK, the assumption here is that the box actually gets compromised with > write access. Not a big deal on a 2 interface SOHO implementation, but > a large PITA if your running >4 interfaces and a lot of userspace programs > and getting paid to fix it. There are LEAF boxes out there using ~20 > interfaces.
If you had 20 interfaces (and I've got several boxes with > 15 interfaces, so I'm aware of the issues), then you're probably making a change to the box config every few weeks. How much of a hassle is the read only boot media then? > WriteProtection gives you something to compare to, and a base > to change to eliminate the hole when it is found. You can wipe out a back > door and buy atleast a little time to update your image with a reboot. Or buy a little time to get compromised again. That's fine - that's a valid reason for wanting read only. I was just seeking to establish there wasn't some other magic reason I'd missed. > Writeprotection is not an ultimate security implementation, rather it is an > optional tool that is available for those who want it. The LEAF developers > tend to try to stay with a floppy image to hone our development skills, this > is not mandatory as reflected by what the mailing-list archives show. In fact, > IDE has been available since Eiger. Or indeed right back to the Dave C releases, if you were prepared to hack at it a little. > What is the difference between a minimal Debain/Slackware install and a full > LEAF install? If running on IDE and having the maximum amount of available > packages is more important than the core of security options we've decided > on, I don't feel you would even be posting to this list. Always remember, your > idea of a 'secure system' does not necessarily relect anyone elses opinion. > We try to provide what options we feel are desired and/or needed. If the > floppy disk does not work as a target media for you, don't use it.... nobody > here will really care. There has been glibc-2.2.x IDE images available for > atleast a year, are you using one? If not, why? Sorry? I *wrote* a glibc 2.2.x howto (such as it is), and provide modified bering root.lrp and initrd.lrp files. The availability, or otherwise, of IDE addons doesn't answer my basic question, which is still "why are people dwelling on read-only as a requirement". > I'm afraid that developing for IDE only will allow many of us to become lazy > in developing small-footprint applications. Fortunately I can say that this is > not the case right now. <shrug> I am getting paid to put together routers, from that POV the reliability and ease of use of flash vs floppy easily outweighs the macho aspects of getting it to fit in 1.68Mb. I'm not saying that developing for floppy is a bad thing, on the contrary, I think it's a great target, but I think that Bering on flash is even better. 32MB of disk-on-module is about twice the price of a floppy drive (US$10 vs US$22, according to one local vendor), and almost exactly the same price as a cheap CDROM drive. From my POV, that's pretty compelling - it's a pretty small component of system cost, compared to (say) US$250 for a four port enet card - other people will have other criteria for choosing their boot media, and that's just fine. > I had uptime over 6 months with my old Eigerstein floppy box until a power > failure. Uhuh. And after 6 months of having dust sucked through the floppy drive, are you utterly confidant that it's going to boot at all? Cheers Si ------------------------------------------------------- This sf.net email is sponsored by:ThinkGeek Welcome to geek heaven. http://thinkgeek.com/sf _______________________________________________ leaf-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/leaf-devel
