title: Why every Linux admin should use packages, and subscribe to Red Hat’s “Enterprise Watch List” link: https://onemoretech.wordpress.com/2007/09/20/why-every-linux-admin-should-use-packages-and-subscribe-to-red-hats-enterprise-watch-list/ author: lembobro description: post_id: 638 created: 2007/09/20 15:49:10 created_gmt: 2007/09/20 15:49:10 comment_status: open post_name: why-every-linux-admin-should-use-packages-and-subscribe-to-red-hats-enterprise-watch-list status: publish post_type: post

Why every Linux admin should use packages, and subscribe to Red Hat’s “Enterprise Watch List”

This is just one of those things that I’ve come to take for granted. Because the RPM repositories for Red Hat products, taken together, are very complete, I’ve by and large made it a policy at home to use them in preference to compiles from source. This includes some proprietary stuff like Nvidia’s graphics drivers. My main reason for doing this is to minimize the hassle involved when some important security update comes through for underlying system code.

Like this week. For PHP.

php security update

The link above is to the web page for a pretty big security update to php and some php modules put out today. I use some of these alot. A real lot. So it’s important for me to make sure I get these security fixes applied. On any other system, like Solaris, this would be a royal pain requiring hours of hand compiling. Because I almost exclusively run Red Hat based systems at home this isn’t a huge problem, since they support and maintain these packages as part of the base distribution. So much for why using packages is a good idea.

I got this news through a nice free service from Red Hat, their Enterprise Watch List. Even if you don’t run a Red Hat system, this is a very good way to keep up on what’s going on in Linux security, and I highly recommend anyone who runs even a single Linux box subscribe.

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