From owner-freebsd-security Thu May 16 5:17: 2 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-security@freebsd.org Received: from midway.uchicago.edu (midway.uchicago.edu [128.135.12.12]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 717BD37B407 for ; Thu, 16 May 2002 05:16:56 -0700 (PDT) Received: from there (adsl-64-108-205-248.dsl.chcgil.ameritech.net [64.108.205.248]) by midway.uchicago.edu (8.12.2/8.12.2) with SMTP id g4GCGlxY010458; Thu, 16 May 2002 07:16:48 -0500 (CDT) Message-Id: <200205161216.g4GCGlxY010458@midway.uchicago.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" From: David Syphers Reply-To: dsyphers@uchicago.edu To: "Chris McCluskey" Subject: Re: Patch/Announcement for DHCPD remote root hole? Date: Thu, 16 May 2002 07:16:50 -0500 X-Mailer: KMail [version 1.3.2] Cc: References: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Wednesday 15 May 2002 10:29 pm, Chris McCluskey wrote: > In this specific case I think all that is required is a simple front > end to cvsup -- a kind-of "This package has been fixed for the > following issues... Do you want to build it and install it now?" kind > of thing. After CVSuping, you can see which ports have changed with pkg_version -v | '<'. If you're curious what the update to the port was, you can head over to http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/ and find out. Granted, this is not quite as simple as a front end for CVSup, but it's not really that hard. > But I think there is another issue here, which may be more to the > point. The FreeBSD documentation is great, but I have yet to see > perfect documentation. There are some small potholes in learning the > cvsup tool, and there are no concrete examples to follow. For those > that are good admins with tarballs and Makefiles, but are new to CVS > this is a hard road. The handbook basically says -- we tend to use > cvsup, cvsup uses CVS, these are the options, here's a template, now > go! A step by step example would be great (saying things like "This is > where you specify the release tag. Go to http://here for a list of > valid tags."). I know manpages are scary for newbies, but when I learned CVSup all I needed was 'man cvsup' and the sample supfile. YMMV, I suppose. > 2) The convention for naming (and retrieving) certain releases is > good. But a small blurb refreshing the user/admin as to what the > options are would be good. In fact a page listing and annotating the > different suffixes would be cool (does it exist already?!). It takes > the "new user" a bit of time to understand the labels used, but that's > part of the FreeBSD rite of passage. That said some clear references > and reminders as to what exactly [example only] RELENG_4_5 is would be > nice. http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/cvs-tags.html is the page after the CVSup page in the handbook. > We can't write code for those that can't read, but for those that can > read, let's give them enough text and examples so they can find out > how good FreeBSD is -- and can be. It sounds like you know what needs to be written - how about writing it up and sending it to the doc people? Docs are definitely an important contribution. -David -- Everyone who believes in telekinesis, raise my hand... Center for Cosmological Physics The University of Chicago To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-security" in the body of the message