Hi,

On an isolated network, updates are definitely a "if it ain't broke don't fix 
it" deal however the reality is this is a rarity these days.  Something 
somewhere will have the Internet.  Linux is pretty solid when it comes to 
problems by not updating but its not immune.

Rivendell uses MySQL and Apache which are fairly well known targets, heck even 
SSH versions have had problems.  Its a balancing act to be honest, Internet 
facing machines should be updated asap in most cases but then internal LAN 
stuff can lag behind a bit with a good firewall and security practices.  The 
important thing to realise is that out of date software was updated for a 
reason, usually in the case of MySQL and Apache there are at least a handful of 
security fixes in each update.

The tricky part is figuring out what a broken/compromised system will cost you 
in terms of potentially losing data (or becoming a spam bot and having your 
emails blocked or having your web domain blocked by google search as your 
apache was compromised), then sitting and figuring out how much time it will 
take to keep it up to date all the time vs the likely hood that an update will 
break something.

I'm not an authority on security by any stretch of the imagination but I've had 
a bad time dealing with being given spam bot status and losing email for 
48hours as well as dealing with a nasty spreading Windows virus for 2 weeks and 
consider the keep stuff up to date mantra a lesson learned (and the lesser 
known all Windows anti-virus programs are a waste of time but you still need to 
use them).

The only two pieces of advice I have is never update your production machines 
first and always have backups somewhere so that you can recover in a bad 
situation.

If you're never going to update things, at least understand the good and bad 
points of doing so.

Regards,

Wayne


-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] on behalf of Nathan Steele
Sent: Wed 09/01/2013 17:30
To: User discussion about the Rivendell Radio Automation System
Subject: Re: [RDD] updated to 2.3.0, lost ASI cards
 
you should uncheck the other repositories in the add software menu to 
avoid it nagging you about "XX Updates availible" honestly if I were not 
using ASI cards I don't think I'd have any problems with the new kernel, 
though it's too soon to really say that for sure. my standard procedure 
in the past was to install from the appliance disk. do all updates,  
configure the system, test, turn off all repo's except paravel, and put 
into production.

I was in the testing phase when rivendell 2.3.0 was released so decided 
to update, I noticed some other updates I thought I might want, and just 
did all the updates again, including the kernel update that broke the 
ASI driver.

My current, production rivendell system has been running with no updates 
other than rivendell for about 2 years now

Nathaniel C. Steele
Assistant Chief Engineer/Technical Director
WTRM-FM / TheCrossFM

On 1/9/2013 12:20 PM, [email protected] wrote:
> So what is the best plan then for building a new system like Nathan, using 
> the Broadcast Appliance CD?
>
> Once Rivendell has been installed, do not install all updates.
>
> Only update rivendell,  'yum install rivendell' at the command line?
>
> Will that properly update the system and not break anything else?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Todd
>
>
> On Wed, 09 Jan 2013 12:01:08 -0500
> Nathan Steele <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>> Another idea you can do to prevent this is to not upgrade the
>>> kernel, but update everything else that needs updating... if it
>>> ain't broke on your hardware, don't fix it.
>> totally agreed, and once a system is in production, it gets updates
>> turned off. should have paid more attention to what I was updating,
>> but I'm still relatively new to 'Nix so it's a good lesson in the
>> ramifications of a kernel update.....
>>
>>
>>> Kernel modules are built using the current working kernel's source
>>> tree, so it's by default installed to the current kernel version
>>> kernel directory (i.e. /lib/modules/`uname -r`)
>> Greek to me...but I'll look into it. any advice would be apreciated
>> though. It's currently working by booting into the previous kernel
>> though, so no panic.
>>
>> Thanks all,
>>
>> Nathaniel C. Steele
>> Assistant Chief Engineer/Technical Director
>> WTRM-FM / TheCrossFM
> _______________________________________________
> Rivendell-dev mailing list
> [email protected]
> http://lists.rivendellaudio.org/mailman/listinfo/rivendell-dev
>
>
>

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