[SunHELP] Solaris web/mail server

[Dale Ghent]

On Mar 6, 2005, at 2:16 PM, Matthew Weigel wrote:

> On 6 Mar, 2005, at 4:07 AM, Dale Ghent wrote:
>
>> Unless you have the need for a certain authentication mechanism that  
>> sun's ssh doesn't support, why bother forcing yourself to maintain  
>> something when it really isn't necessary ?
>
> Well, either way it's necessary - whichever one you go with, you have  
> to track that stream for security updates.  Found some interesting  
> commentary on another list's archives about it:
>
> http://sunportal.sunmanagers.org/pipermail/summaries/2003-March/ 
> 003368.html

Sure, we can ditch any of the free software that Sun provides a variant  
of (example: Sun SSH, Sun Sendmail) but you must ask yourself if it is  
worth the extra hassle.

I've been paying attention to Sun's performance with updating Sun SSH  
(in Solaris 9) after a vulnerability in OpenSSH becomes known. I have  
yet to see Sun sit on a known vulnerability for more than a few days  
before they release a patch for ssh/sshd.

So...

Given the wide scope of my job and the many things I do, downloading,  
compiling, and testing OpenSSH would probably happen with the same time  
frame as Sun's. Unless I need a special mechanism (such as S/KEY) that  
Sun's SSH does not support, I see no need to add Yet Another Package To  
Recompile And Test to my list of things to do when all I need to do is  
download and install the Sun SSH patch.

Sendmail, however, is a different story. I require some functional  
additions that Sun's Sendmail does not have. Thus, I roll my own  
version.

/dale