rPath Spurs Operating System Evolution with Ubuntu, CentOS Support [LWN.net]

rPath Spurs Operating System Evolution with Ubuntu, CentOS Support

Posted Nov 21, 2008 0:12 UTC (Fri) by Burgundavia (guest, #25172)
Parent article: rPath Spurs Operating System Evolution with Ubuntu, CentOS Support

I really love what rPath has been doing, but the custom distro and package management has always scared me away. Hopefully this will attract more people like me.

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rPath Spurs Operating System Evolution with Ubuntu, CentOS Support

Posted Nov 21, 2008 1:43 UTC (Fri) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

Scared you away as an individual user? Maybe what rPath is doing is actually a better fit for a different class of user. Dedicated, virtualized application deployments for specialized and controlled business needs is one obvious example. That's rpath's core market as a business. The virtual appliance building framework which is the focuse of this press release really isn't end-user hotness. rpath's previous creation, conary , is more directly useful for end users. You want a taste of that, try foresight linux and then get involved with that community as a developer or packager if you want to get familiar with rpath's developer oriented tech.

But more generally I think that the technologies rpath has put together make a really good fit for more than "virtual" appliances, they might make a lot of sense for actual appliances.. for dedicated hardware targets with prescribed usage scenarios..like computing appliances, personal gadgets, point of sell devices of all sorts, and or even perhaps netbooks. In the oncoming rush to market by several vendors to find the discount price point.. if netbooks end up being marketed more like appliances... more like cellphones...than general purpose computers... the way rpath's tech lets you put a distribution image together and roll updates for it might be appealing to netbook oems over the more traditional linux distribution models.

-jef

rPath Spurs Operating System Evolution with Ubuntu, CentOS Support

Posted Nov 21, 2008 3:02 UTC (Fri) by Burgundavia (guest, #25172) [Link]

No, scared me away as somebody who looked at it to run in a small business. Basically, I couldn't find any good information about security, updates, proactive hardening, etc.

rPath Linux update and security information

Posted Nov 21, 2008 15:19 UTC (Fri) by michaelkjohnson (subscriber, #41438) [Link]

No, scared me away as somebody who looked at it to run in a small business. Basically, I couldn't find any good information about security, updates, proactive hardening, etc.

I'm sorry that this information was hard to find; it hasn't been our intention to make it so. Our rPath Linux page describes how to find information about maintenance and security updates. Linux Weekly News itself does include rPath's advisories in its security update summaries, and rPath maintains mailing lists dedicated to only security-related updates and for all updates, both general maintenance and security-related for the convenience of our users. We also summarize changes with links to our advisories on a per-product basis; for example rPath Linux 2 Changes, and all of our advisories carry a permanent URL providing the text of the advisory.

"Proactive hardening" can mean multiple things. rPath Linux 2 has been built using --fstack-protector and FORTIFY_SOURCE=2. It does not include SELinux. I'd be glad to answer further more specific questions.

Returning to the topic of the post to which these comments are attached, there is mailing list that promulgates CentOS advisories as they are incorporated into the rBuilder repository which contains the packages for CentOS 5 Delivered by rPath.