[WBEL-users] Cryptoloop in stock WBEL kernel? Average time for security updates to get available?

[John Morris]

On Sun, 18 Apr 2004, Alex Georgiev wrote:

> > The kernel support appears to be there but the losetup package is still 
> > unpatched.  I will be fixing that for my own use, probably won't roll it 
> > into the official package because WBEL is supposed to be as close to RHEL 
> > as I can make it.  Probably will post it somewhere though.  I really miss 
> > the crypto loopback with my ssh and gpg keyrings.
> 
> Are you sure? Redhat are selling an enterprise level os with
> half-support for encrypted filesystesm? I find this hard to
> grasp.

Guess they are still afraid of the legal/political implications.  Things
were moving in the right direction on the crypto front but 9/11 seems to
have moved things back a few years.  They included the crypto support in
the kernel for the VPN users I suspect, since few would argue against
secure networks for the corporate world, but encrypted filesystems have
had a counterculture aura to them.

> I do not care for UI fixes, but security updates do bother me.
> Is it possible one to make an automated system,
> that checks redhat servers for new SRPMS,
> downolads, recompiles and places them into the repository folder?
> Or not all packages can be treated like that ( new kernels I assume
> will be a problem)?

Yes, assuming you have a suitable buildhost with everything installed,
generating your own updates is almost trivial.  To make it even easier,
and to allow me to support AMD64, I'm moving to building in a chroot
environment.  The advantage for you would be the ability to have an
'everything' install available to build in without being required to
dedicate a machine or even a seperate partition to it.  When I get the
details worked out a little better I plan on releasing a couple of simple
scripts to totally automate creating and entering a chroot build
environment.

-- 
John M.      http://www.beau.org/~jmorris        This post is 100% M$ Free!
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