asterisk users - Feb 2006 - Fedora Core 3 or Fedora Core 4? yum update ornot?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-users-
> bounces@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Rich Adamson
> Sent: 08 February 2006 08:41
> To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
> Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Fedora Core 3 or Fedora Core 4? yum
update
> ornot?
> 
> However, if you expose the box to the internet, you might want to
upgrade
> those components that are known to have vulnerabilities. If you don't,
> count
> on the box being compromised sooner or later.
> 
> ------------------------
> > This is sound advice worth taking.  If you get a system stable in
> > production, LEAVE IT ALONE!!
> >

We have just switched from SUSE to Fedora4 for our new installs and are
very happy with it.  Personally I much prefer it and bonus is it's free.

Something that might be of interest is before I deployed the box live I
did a full yum update I guess it must have updated the kernel or
something as after I rebooted the box zap stopped working with some
weird errors.

Quick recompile of zaptel had everything working a charm but its
something worth keeping in mind.

I think the "once it's working, leave it alone" advice is very
sound
indeed :)


HTH

Alex


Information contained in this e-mail and any attachments are intended for the
use of the addressee only, and may contain confidential information of Ubiquity
Software Corporation.  All unauthorized use, disclosure or distribution is
strictly prohibited.  If you are not the addressee, please notify the sender
immediately and destroy all copies of this email.  Unless otherwise expressly
agreed in writing signed by an officer of Ubiquity Software Corporation, nothing
in this communication shall be deemed to be legally binding.  Thank you.

Alex Barnes wrote:
>I think the "once it's working, leave it alone" advice is very
sound
>indeed :)
>
>  
>
A similar rule says "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

-- 
JP Carballo

http://www.netfone2x.com
Bringing the world closer.

It might look like I'm doing nothing, but at the cellular level, I'm
really quite busy.

I think that some people try to make their asterisk box a do-everything
super server.  Can you image a traditional PBX with direct access via the
internet, serving web pages via apache, running sendmail, etc.

Our approach has been keep it simple.  We lock each Asterisk PBX down has
hard as possible.  This includes no direct internet connection (it should
sit behind a real firewall), minimal services running, etc.  With this
philosophy, one can treat the PBX as an appliance: don't touch it if
it's
working.

If you must run host web pages, run mail servers, offer SQLnet connections,
make visible to the internet, etc. then other users are correct - you better
continually patch/update ASAP.

MD



-----Original Message-----
From: asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Alex Barnes
Sent: Wednesday, February 08, 2006 4:04 AM
To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] Fedora Core 3 or Fedora Core 4? yum update
ornot?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-users- 
> bounces@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Rich Adamson
> Sent: 08 February 2006 08:41
> To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
> Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Fedora Core 3 or Fedora Core 4? yum
update
> ornot?
> 
> However, if you expose the box to the internet, you might want to
upgrade
> those components that are known to have vulnerabilities. If you don't, 
> count on the box being compromised sooner or later.
> 
> ------------------------
> > This is sound advice worth taking.  If you get a system stable in 
> > production, LEAVE IT ALONE!!
> >

We have just switched from SUSE to Fedora4 for our new installs and are very
happy with it.  Personally I much prefer it and bonus is it's free.

Something that might be of interest is before I deployed the box live I did
a full yum update I guess it must have updated the kernel or something as
after I rebooted the box zap stopped working with some weird errors.

Quick recompile of zaptel had everything working a charm but its something
worth keeping in mind.

I think the "once it's working, leave it alone" advice is very
sound indeed
:)


HTH

Alex


Information contained in this e-mail and any attachments are intended for
the use of the addressee only, and may contain confidential information of
Ubiquity Software Corporation.  All unauthorized use, disclosure or
distribution is strictly prohibited.  If you are not the addressee, please
notify the sender immediately and destroy all copies of this email.  Unless
otherwise expressly agreed in writing signed by an officer of Ubiquity
Software Corporation, nothing in this communication shall be deemed to be
legally binding.  Thank you.

_______________________________________________
--Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com --

Asterisk-Users mailing list
To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
   http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users

This is turning into a sysadmin theory flamewar, but I think the main
point is that Fedora probably isn't the best thing to run on production
machines for QA reasons. This is because Fedora is more or less the QA
testbed for RHEL. CentOS is, for all intents and purposes (except a
little bug I discovered with large block devices >2 TB) the same as RHEL
without the support contract, so it is probably a better choice for a
server you want to keep working for a while.

Debian stable would probably work just as well (though IMO debian tends
to be a bit TOO old,) as would SUSE's stable release version. Just don't
use a "testing" release on a production machine. "yum
update" (or
up2date, or apt) is pretty safe on "stable" release trees, but in the
testing releases you can run into problems with package dependencies,
versions, slowly updated mirrors... you get the point.

-Ryan

-----Original Message-----
From: asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Jens
Vagelpohl
Sent: Wednesday, February 08, 2006 4:21 AM
To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Fedora Core 3 or Fedora Core 4? yum update
ornot?


On 8 Feb 2006, at 09:43, JP Carballo wrote:
> Alex Barnes wrote:
>
>> I think the "once it's working, leave it alone" advice is
very sound
>> indeed :)
>>
>>
> A similar rule says "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Until you realize some script kiddie has exploited another Apache/ 
mod_ssl bug and is now remote-controlling your box.

There are no hard and fast recipes here. Neither the "automatically  
apply any and all updates" nor the "build and never look at it
again"-
policies should be applied without taking the specific situation into  
account.

If your box is on the internet you simply cannot forego updates.  
Period. If your box is completely walled off from the internet you  
can be lax about it (unless you have to worry about attacks from the  
inside).

The best policy is probably one that is halfway between the two.  
There are packages you only ever want to update "under parental  
supervision", like kernels. Then there are packages where you want to  
grab any update you can get ASAP, like Apache, or PHP, or SSH. Yum  
allows you to express this in its configuration, you can exclude  
packages from the automatic update.

I personally run a nightly script that uses yum to determine if there  
are updates. I apply them by hand. However, this is only feasible  
because it runs on just two machines.

jens

_______________________________________________
--Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com --

Asterisk-Users mailing list
To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
   http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users

CentOS is what Asterisk@Home is based on--- that should also inform of
someone else's thinking about stable distros to use..

CentOS is still RPM based, so you'd be in familiar turf as far as that
goes-- no 'apt' stuff to relearn to support a new distro..

t 

-----Original Message-----
From: asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Russ Price
Sent: Tuesday, February 07, 2006 11:21 PM
To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Fedora Core 3 or Fedora Core 4? yum update
ornot?

Zach A wrote:
> What is recommended for a production quality system, FC3 or FC4. Once 
> installed, is it necessary to run yum update, does that make things 
> any better or just take up more memory?
I wouldn't recommend Fedora Core for a production system - at least not
a server.  For one thing, FC3 is now obsolescent, and FC updates in
general have a very good chance of breaking things; I know from personal
experience.  Once support stops for a Fedora Core version, security
updates via Fedora Legacy are few and far between.

I'd go with CentOS 4.2 instead, or, if you have the bucks, the
corresponding RHEL version.  Updates are provided for a much longer
period, and are far less likely to break things.

	Russ
_______________________________________________
--Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com --

Asterisk-Users mailing list
To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
   http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users