wigblog ramblings of a philomathic polymath

5May/052

RPM & APT: Let’s get it right folks…

I'm sick and tired of all these articles commentaries I read where Debian users argue that apt-get is soo much better than RPM because of dependency resolution blah blah blah. Stop comparing apples and oranges!!! Let's all say it together now:

deb is to RPM...
as apt-get is to yum

RPM is NOT a package management system. Is is a package format! Yum/up2date is a package management system...

Filed under: Linux 2 Comments
17Feb/051

Study Finds Windows More Secure Than Linux

I'm sure I'll be hearing from some people on this Slashdot story:

Study Finds Windows More Secure Than Linux:
cfelde writes "A Windows Web server is more secure than a similarly set-up Linux server, according to a study presented yesterday by two Florida researchers." In addition to the Seattle Times article, there is also coverage on VNUnet. From the article: "The researchers, appearing at the RSA Conference of computer-security professionals, discussed the findings in an event, 'Security Showdown: Windows vs. Linux.' One of them, a Linux fan, runs an open-source server at home; the other is a Microsoft enthusiast. They wanted to cut through the near-religious arguments about which system is better from a security standpoint."

Now the pullquote they didn't show you was this:

Ford said the idea was to represent what an average system administrator may do, as opposed to a "wizard" who could take extra steps to provide plenty of security on a Linux setup, for instance.

In my book, the "average" system administrator should definitely be taking any extra steps to ensure security on a box. If they don't, they shouldn't be administering systems.

Filed under: Linux 1 Comment
9Dec/040

Linux set for ERP ascendency

Man I can't wait for this: Linux set for ERP ascendency | The Register

One in five Unix houses expect to change operating system in the next three years. Four out of five of these expect to move to Linux.

Peerstone found two main barriers to widespread adoption of Linux: concerns of a higher total cost of ownership because of the high cost of Linux administrators; and fears raised by SCO's attempted "legal assault on Linux intellectual property".

Two points:

  • High cost of Linux administrators: Don't these companies realize that their current Solaris expertise IS Linux expertise? There are of course little differences, but come on.... it's not like it's VMS or anything!
  • We all know SCO is finished now, right?
Filed under: Linux No Comments
17Nov/0412

Apache (httpd) 403 errors & SELinux in FC3

Quick fix:

chcon -R -t httpd_sys_content_t <path to web files>

Now for the meat:

So in Fedora Core 3 we now have SELinux enabled by default in the installation. I decided to leave it enabled because security is a "Good Thing" (right?) and I knew I was going to have to get familiar with it at some point. So this was all fine and good until I ran into the first piece of the system I wanted to work with that was affected by the default policy that's called "targeted".