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Date:      Mon, 13 Aug 2001 00:34:01 -0600
From:      Nate Williams <nate@yogotech.com>
To:        kc5vdj@yahoo.com
Cc:        Joseph Mallett <jmallett@NewGold.NET>, Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com>, Jason Vervlied <jvervlied@hway.net>, freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: bash in /usr/local/bin?
Message-ID:  <15223.29913.845087.208796@nomad.yogotech.com>
In-Reply-To: <3B76FD51.40805@yahoo.com>
References:  <3B74D180.D036D629@hway.net> <3B75D33D.68368F22@softweyr.com> <3B764D47.6060902@yahoo.com> <20010812152709.A73284@NewGold.NET> <3B76FD51.40805@yahoo.com>

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> I said I'd drop it, but apparently there are people that don't
> understand the dinosaur mentality of certain organizations such as
> DOD, DISA/DECC, OSD, DARPA, USA, USN, USAF, and USMC.

> If it's not in the base setup, on a production box, you can't use it.

*Huh*????  This policy must have been implemented in the last 12 months,
since the last big contract my previous company did with the USMC, we
had a couple dozen Sun workstations, and I had all sorts of
'non-standard' software installed on it, including most of the GNU
utilities, gzip, etc....  Prior to this contract, we did similar work
for the Army and there were few restrictions to the software we wrote
for them.

> Everything must be kept in it's ORIGINAL install location,

It's wherever the installation tools installed them into.  In the case
of the Solaris boxes, I think the stuff was all in /usr/local/bin, which
suprised me because I was used to 'optional' software going in
/opt/*/bin due to the packaging details that most pre-packaged 3rd party
software I've gotten for Solaris boxes.

> otherwise you MUST justify it and ask DISA/DECC for a waiver, which in
> itself, is a pain in the ass, and in many cases, not likely to happen
> due to dinosaur mentality.

Again, as a former USMC/DOD contracter, this was *certainly* not the
case.

> FreeBSD is getting military contracts now.

FreeBSD has been used in military contracts for *years* now.  Maybe it
wasn't as high-profile as the TrustedBSD work, but it's been in use by
the Government for quite a long time (and in a state where the people
involved had direct knowledge that FreeBSD was being used).

> I'm sure there are equally restrictive environments for computers and
> operating systems in *EVERY* country, but I speak from my personal
> experience with the dinosaurs at DOD.  At DOD, *EVERY* copy of FreeBSD
> will be subject to what I am saying.  In the Sun environment in which
> I did my last DOD contract at, if tcsh wasn't in /bin, I wouldn't have
> been able to use it.  That's how backwards they are.

Again, my suspicion is that you're dealing with some very weird folks at
your installation.  My experience was quite different, and involved some
machines that were running hardened versions of Solaris on secret
networks, although I was never allowed to use those machines once they
were installed there. :) :)

Things aren't as bad as you're experience might suggest....




Nate

ps. Amazingly enough, the software we had to integrate with (being used
by both branches) was *riddled* with remote exploit and DoS bugs, but
unfortunately they could not be fixed and still stay 'compliant'.  The
protocol was set in stone (gotta stay compatible), and some of the DoS
bugs were due to the incredibly stupid protocol being used.

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