Mandrake and Slackware Distros

Mandrake and Slackware Distros

[Ben Ritter]

Hey Group,
I'm kinda new here, how secure are the current distributions of 
Mandrake and Slackware linux?


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Re: Mandrake and Slackware Distros

[Russell Coker]

On Sat, 28 Dec 2002 03:33, Ben Ritter wrote:
> I'm kinda new here, how secure are the current distributions of
> Mandrake and Slackware linux?

The SE Linux project is not about testing distributions for security so the 
people involved in it aren't about to start discussing the relative merits of 
various distributions regarding general security (at least not officially and 
not on this list).

SE Linux support in a distribution is (IMHO) best for Debian.  The Debian 
packages for SE Linux patched utilities are well maintained for two different 
releases of Debian (the current release "woody" and the beta's of the next 
release).  Debian has the best support for an easy install of SE on an 
existing system (IMHO), and Brian is working on installation disks that have 
a Debian machine running SE Linux right from the start.  Debian has the best 
support for upgrading an SE Linux computer to new versions of the server 
programs it runs.

The NSA people do their testing work on Red Hat and release their official 
patches against the versions of software it includes.  Also Mark Westerman is 
producing RPMs of SE Linux software for RH.

There are quite a few German people working on SUSE support, some of which 
happens on a German-language list AFAIK.

Regarding Slackware support for SE Linux, I only recall seeing reports of 
people having problems getting things to work on Slackware with no great 
success stories (if someone has it working well on Slackware then please 
inform us).

I don't recall anyone actively working on Mandrake SE Linux support.

This doesn't make Slackware or Mandrake inherantly any less secure than 
Debian.  However they are less supported for SE Linux (which is what this 
list is about).

-- 
http://www.coker.com.au/selinux/   My NSA Security Enhanced Linux packages
http://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++/  Bonnie++ hard drive benchmark
http://www.coker.com.au/postal/    Postal SMTP/POP benchmark
http://www.coker.com.au/~russell/  My home page


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Re: Mandrake and Slackware Distros

[forrest whitcher]

I've been testing / using the selinux kernel on slackware-current (running 
in a VMware vm) with good results for 3 months now, and have also now 
installed lsm/selinux on a laptop.

I'll be installing a new server soon and will run on either slack or rh.
w/ selinux.

I haven't had time to put together my notes of what needs to be done on
slack. certainly you need to build / install PAM, if kerberos isn't 
installed then the ssh build needs to be patched and I think there was a 
problem with incude header files involving ncurses and a few other minor
issues, mostly predictable due to layout problems.

I've tried on more experimental linuxes and had very poor results however.

forrest

On Fri, 27 Dec 2002 18:33:55 -0800 (unchecked - local sync NTPstrat4)
Ben Ritter <benritter@earthlink.net> did inscribe thusly:

> Hey Group,
> I'm kinda new here, how secure are the current distributions of 
> Mandrake and Slackware linux?
> 
> 
> --
> This message was distributed to subscribers of the selinux mailing list.
> If you no longer wish to subscribe, send mail to majordomo@tycho.nsa.gov with
> the words "unsubscribe selinux" without quotes as the message.

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