From owner-freebsd-hackers Sun Oct 8 0:53:19 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from static.unixfreak.org (static.unixfreak.org [63.198.170.139]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0222237B502 for ; Sun, 8 Oct 2000 00:53:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: by static.unixfreak.org (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 8D2D91F23; Sun, 8 Oct 2000 00:53:16 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Re: Bugfixes, security fixes, versions In-Reply-To: <20001007213929.C24996@futuresouth.com> "from Matthew D. Fuller at Oct 7, 2000 09:39:29 pm" To: "Matthew D. Fuller" Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2000 00:53:16 -0700 (PDT) Cc: hackers@freebsd.org From: Dima Dorfman Reply-To: dima@unixfreak.org X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL82 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Message-Id: <20001008075316.8D2D91F23@static.unixfreak.org> Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > The whole "Stable Branch" thread on -security gave me an idea that's been > perculating for some time. > > Problem: > We have security problems in (say) -STABLE. They get fixed. We post an > advisory about it, giving correction dates for -STABLE and -CURRENT, and > the associated cutoff in which releases are fixed and which are not. > However, tracking dates on buildworlds etc is hard. I'm sure I'm not > the only one who usually does build/installworlds on source at least a > week old. I check it it, built it, and if it's clean, wait to see if > anyone else has any problems with it. And since I tend to put off building > the kernel until I install, the date uname gives isn't necessarily useful > for checking this sort of stuff. > > Idea: > In the version string (or maybe somewhere else convenient), start adding > codes at each -RELEASE along a branch. So, say we find a bug in fingerd. > It's in 4.1-RELEASE, fixed in 4.1-STABLE at some point, and fixed in > 4.2-RELEASE. We could add an 'a' to the version string in -STABLE, so it > will read out as "4.1-STABLE a". Find another bug and fix it, we have > "4.1-STABLE b". Presumably, this would only apply to such things as Why not just use a date? I do this on most of my systems. My `uname -r` reads: 4.1-20000916-STABLE I started doing this for the exact same reason you described above--to know when I updated the system. It does clutter the `uname -a` output a bit, so it could be done similar to the way you suggested with the flag: "4.1-STABLE 20000916". Just a thought. Regards -- Dima Dorfman Finger dima@unixfreak.org for my public PGP key. It's kind of fun to do the impossible. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message