Re: [gentoo-hardened] security updates

["Kevin F. Quinn" <kevquinn@gentoo.org>]

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On Sat, 10 Feb 2007 17:02:38 +0100
Nagy Gabor Peter <linux42@freemail.hu> wrote:

> Hi list,
> 
> I have a question:
> 
> Since I am new to gentoo, I don't know how security updates work.
> 
> I know Debian. In Debian if I have stable installed on a production
> server, I get regular security fixes, often backported from the
> current bleeding edge version, where upstream has fixed the bug to
> the version that Debian stable contains.

Where a security issue is identified in a package, all versions in the
tree are either bumped (patched, backported or otherwise) or removed
from the tree.

> I have noticed that in gentoo there are many versions of a package
> that are considered stable. Take glibc as an example, according to
> http://packages.gentoo.org/search/?sstring=glibc, on x86 there are 8
> versions available, all of them stable.

Yep; that's normal.  We don't force people to always go up to the
latest version of a package.  This is especially true for central
packages like glibc, which users may well prefer not to upgrade apart
from security fixes.  If you're building a new system, you might as well
use the latest (which is what you get unless you specifically ask for
something different).

> I have now two gentoo machines, one is going to be production, the
> other is used to get me a little bit more familiar with the system.
> 
> On the playground machine I have 2006.1 installed, glibc 2.4-r3
> On the production machine I have 2006.0, switched to hardened profile,
> and then recompile, there I have glibc 2.3.6-r5
> 
> I see now that glibc 2.4-r3 should be upgraded to 2.4-r4 (by the way,
> where can I check the differences (Changelog) between two gentoo
> versions (like r3 and r4)?)
> 
> So my question: If someone finds a bug in glibc that gets corrected,
> what does the gentoo maintainers do about it? Do they backport the fix
> in all 8 versions? Or just in some of the versions and mark the not
> fixed ones ~?

For serious security issues, all versions, stable and ~, should get
patched & bumped, or removed if they're not easily patched.  For other
bugs it depends on the severity of a bug.

> Is there some mailinglist (like debian-security-announce) where such
> security fixes are announced?

See the gentoo-announce mailing list, where all GLSA (Gentoo Linux
Security Advisories) are posted.

> What is the reason that the hardened profile selects the 2.3.6 version
> instead of the 2.4? I mean not in glibc's case only, but generally.

Our toolchain modifications for >=glibc-2.4 and gcc-4.1 aren't quite
ready yet.  I just have to resolve some significant test failures on
x86, then it should be good to go.

> Does libc 2.4 have troubles with ssp?

Not really, however SSP has changed significantly from gcc-3 to
gcc-4 - RedHat have re-implemented SSP and in the process changed its
behaviour in significant ways.

-- 
Kevin F. Quinn

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