On 21 August 2015 at 20:41, Bruce Dubbs <[email protected]> wrote:

> Richard Melville wrote:
>
>> On 21 August 2015 at 19:10, Bruce Dubbs <[email protected]
>> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>>
>>     Richard Melville wrote:
>>
>>         It was ftp and telnet that I was thinking of, along with rcp,
>> rexec,
>>         rlogin, rsh and tftp.  Surely, ifconfig has been marked as
>>         deprecated
>>         for some time and replaced with iproute2.
>>
>>
>>     I agree that the r* programs are obsolete, but the others are useful
>>     in some circumstances.  Many users, including me, expect ifconfig.
>>     Do you know of any distros that do not include ifconfig?
>>
>>
>> Not sure if that was rhetorical, but no, not off hand.  Mind you, I
>> haven't carried out a survey.  It's a fair point, but if it comes down
>> to having to install inetutils just to get ifconfig I'm not sure that
>> warrants it.  If users have the r* programs the likelihood is that they
>> will use them, even though we all know that they are a security hazard.
>> Maybe, at least, there should be a health warning in the book.
>>
>
> Perhaps I'll disable the r* programs, but we still want ftp and telnet.
> We could add one of the ftp programs like vsftpd, but that goes against the
> intended minimal set of packages in LFS.  I do not know where else the
> telnet program could be obtained.


Of course, there are plenty of issues with ftp and telnet, but I understand
the problem.  Quite often we are forced to use these tools by third
parties: ftp by hosting companies that don't have a decent secure framework
in place, and telnet by wifi router manufacturers, whose cheap and nasty
routers are foisted upon us by cost-cutting ISPs.

BTW, netkit has ftp and telnet as part of the suite.

With respect to ifconfig, that exists as part of the net-tools package
which is already in the BLFS book.  Can't that be moved to LFS?

To summarise, iputils (in place of inetutils), netkit, and net-tools
(already in blfs) would be, in my opinion, safer alternatives; no highly
insecure r* programs.  We would only be adding one more package and moving
another.

Just an idea :-)  I'm sure you're not looking for additional work.

Richard



Richard
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