I've been asked to think about setting up an installation for a recently- widowed man. His needs are small - mail, Internet, on-line banking, basically - but his wife dealt with all of it on her laptop and he feels very insecure. It seems to me that CentOS would be perfect for him except for the need to keep it securely patched. I'm wondering if it's possible to auto-install security updates - for that matter, with so small a set of applications perhaps auto-installing every update would be good enough. Maybe this could be done with a script run under cron.daily, so that anacron picks it up? I'd be glad of any advice. Anne -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part. URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20090519/fd9e4c23/attachment-0004.sig>
At Tue, 19 May 2009 16:11:35 +0100 CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> wrote:> > > > I've been asked to think about setting up an installation for a recently- > widowed man. His needs are small - mail, Internet, on-line banking, basically > - but his wife dealt with all of it on her laptop and he feels very insecure. > > It seems to me that CentOS would be perfect for him except for the need to > keep it securely patched. I'm wondering if it's possible to auto-install > security updates - for that matter, with so small a set of applications > perhaps auto-installing every update would be good enough. > > Maybe this could be done with a script run under cron.daily, so that anacron > picks it up? > > I'd be glad of any advice.Rather than do auto updates (sometimes there are conflicts or other issues needing *intellegent* intervention -- the recent update from CentOS 5.2 to 5.3 required that glibc be updated before the rest of the updates for example), maybe you should schedule a regular visit to this fellow. Not only will this make sure the machine is properly updated it also gives you a chance to check for any problems that will have cropped up.> > Anne > Content-Description: This is a digitally signed message part. > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v2.0.10 (GNU/Linux) > > iEYEABECAAYFAkoSzCcACgkQbMErw/n0TZol0QCeOYPbXqm0bp+eERku7KTP7ugn > dNwAn14zTxP1/YJOf4PrXjAimhkW/v37 > =DW3r > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > > MIME-Version: 1.0 > > _______________________________________________ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS at centos.org > http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos > >-- Robert Heller -- 978-544-6933 Deepwoods Software -- Download the Model Railroad System http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Binaries for Linux and MS-Windows heller at deepsoft.com -- http://www.deepsoft.com/ModelRailroadSystem/
On Tue, 19 May 2009 16:11:35 +0100 Anne Wilson wrote:> It seems to me that CentOS would be perfect for him except for the need to > keep it securely patched. I'm wondering if it's possible to auto-install > security updates - for that matter, with so small a set of applications > perhaps auto-installing every update would be good enough.yum-updatesd -- MELVILLE THEATRE ~ Melville Sask ~ http://www.melvilletheatre.com
On Tue, 2009-05-19 at 16:11 +0100, Anne Wilson wrote:> I've been asked to think about setting up an installation for a recently- > widowed man. His needs are small - mail, Internet, on-line banking, basically > - but his wife dealt with all of it on her laptop and he feels very insecure. > > It seems to me that CentOS would be perfect for him except for the need to > keep it securely patched. I'm wondering if it's possible to auto-install > security updates - for that matter, with so small a set of applications > perhaps auto-installing every update would be good enough. > > Maybe this could be done with a script run under cron.daily, so that anacron > picks it up? > > I'd be glad of any advice. > > Anne--- That's just the thing you don't have to do anything. Yumupdatesd will handle that for you. Or stop the service and put on a cronjob. Just that easy. JohnStanley
Anne Wilson wrote:> I've been asked to think about setting up an installation for a recently- > widowed man. His needs are small - mail, Internet, on-line banking, > basically > - but his wife dealt with all of it on her laptop and he feels very > insecure. > > It seems to me that CentOS would be perfect for him except for the need to > keep it securely patched. I'm wondering if it's possible to auto-install > security updates - for that matter, with so small a set of applications > perhaps auto-installing every update would be good enough. > > Maybe this could be done with a script run under cron.daily, so that anacron > picks it up?Wasn't there some special process you had to go through when going from 5.2 to 5.3? Something along the lines of having to manually update one(or more) packages before upgrading the rest of the system? I see that sort of issue as being very problematic for anything that auto installs updates. http://wiki.centos.org/Manuals/ReleaseNotes/CentOS5.3#head-198f803bc13b52348780db429ae42e0daf82282b I think a better solution would be an Ubuntu LTS installation, it's more geared for that type of person, and provides pretty seamless upgrades for minor and major versions in my experience. Debian has a nice system in that I can "fix" the configuration file for apt-get to force it to the current release of the product(the default is to point to whatever is the current "stable" release), which will make sure all updates applied to the system are 100% compatible. If/when I decide to go to a newer version I can take the time to read the release notes and change the configuration to point to the next major version of the distro, otherwise you can fall into a similar trap, having a system blindly try to apply updates that may be out of order for a major version change. Not everyone keeps up to date on the day a particular release comes out. Ubuntu solves that by placing an easy to use button on the update manager to update to the next version of the distro or you can keep getting packages from the existing version, of course it's only maintained for so long. My sister's laptop was so out of date (and wasn't on a LTS version at the time), I had to jump through a few hoops to get it updated as the intermediate versions were no longer on the main mirror sites. I think her laptop was 3 releases behind at the time. Major version changes on a RHEL-system are even more complicated, even Red hat advises doing a clean install. http://www.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5/html/Installation_Guide/ch-upgrade-x86.html SuSE used to be pretty good at upgrading as well though it's been a few years since I used it. RHEL/CentOS are great for servers, and perhaps managed workstations (thinking of replacements for things like Sun/SGI/HP-UX workstations, and perhaps corporate desktops), I don't see it as a good candidate for many other things, but that's why there are multiple distributions, no distro is good at everything. nate
on 5-19-2009 8:11 AM Anne Wilson spake the following:> I've been asked to think about setting up an installation for a recently- > widowed man. His needs are small - mail, Internet, on-line banking, basically > - but his wife dealt with all of it on her laptop and he feels very insecure. > > It seems to me that CentOS would be perfect for him except for the need to > keep it securely patched. I'm wondering if it's possible to auto-install > security updates - for that matter, with so small a set of applications > perhaps auto-installing every update would be good enough. > > Maybe this could be done with a script run under cron.daily, so that anacron > picks it up? > > I'd be glad of any advice. > > AnneMaybe you could arrange to do some remote access every 3 or 4 months or so and just update it for him. You could also show him how to do it during this time, and it might give him some confidence and a better sense of independence which he will probably very much appreciate. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 258 bytes Desc: OpenPGP digital signature URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20090519/656f6969/attachment-0004.sig>
Hi Anne,> [...] he feels very insecure. > > It seems to me that CentOS would be perfect for him except for the need to > keep it securely patched. [...] > > I'd be glad of any advice.Like a previous poster, I'd also suggest, that you use an other distibution in this case. Ubuntu might be a good choice or maybe SuSE. Both are probably better suited for non-commandline techies :-). Both distributions offer easy-to-use update tools. I'd also suggest not to use Fedora or OpenSuse. They have both very fast release cycles, forcing you to updating very often. On the other hand, showstoppers can always happen and in this case probably nothing will save you a personal appearance :-) Cheers frank
On Tuesday 19 May 2009 16:11:35 Anne Wilson wrote:> I've been asked to think about setting up an installation for a recently- > widowed man. His needs are small - mail, Internet, on-line banking, > basically - but his wife dealt with all of it on her laptop and he feels > very insecure. > > It seems to me that CentOS would be perfect for him except for the need to > keep it securely patched. I'm wondering if it's possible to auto-install > security updates - for that matter, with so small a set of applications > perhaps auto-installing every update would be good enough. > > Maybe this could be done with a script run under cron.daily, so that > anacron picks it up? > > I'd be glad of any advice. > > AnneAs much as I like CentOS, I tend to agree with the other posts. I don't think it is the right distro for non techies. I set up my in-laws with Linux Mint (running KDE, of course) and they could even handle installing the codecs and other non OSS stuff. Mint is a nice distro based on Ubuntu. John
On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 04:11:35PM +0100, Anne Wilson wrote:> I've been asked to think about setting up an installation for a recently- > widowed man. His needs are small - mail, Internet, on-line banking, basically > - but his wife dealt with all of it on her laptop and he feels very insecure. > > It seems to me that CentOS would be perfect for him except for the need to > keep it securely patched. I'm wondering if it's possible to auto-install > security updates - for that matter, with so small a set of applications > perhaps auto-installing every update would be good enough. > > Maybe this could be done with a script run under cron.daily, so that anacron > picks it up? > > I'd be glad of any advice.Use debian stable (currently 'lenny'). The philosophy behind stable releases of debian is release updates for packages only if you have security bugs. That way when you run 'apt-get update && apt-get upgrade' you download and install only those already _installed_ packages which got security bugs. Regards Przemyslaw Bak (przemol) -- http://przemol.blogspot.com/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Audi kilka tysiecy zlotych taniej? Przebieraj wsrod tysiecy ogloszen! Sprawdz: http://link.interia.pl/f216f