Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2012 19:28:47 +0200 From: Thomas <freebsdlists@bsdunix.ch> To: freebsd-security@freebsd.org Subject: Re: getting the running patch level Message-ID: <5037B9CF.2010708@bsdunix.ch> In-Reply-To: <CAC8HS2E%2BQGFp2fhWvkS6YcL6JgxnjYVRgQd4ykD1eJAWd_0cVg@mail.gmail.com> References: <20120819144637.GA17778@psconsult.nl> <50377929.3060106@bsdunix.ch> <CAC8HS2E%2BQGFp2fhWvkS6YcL6JgxnjYVRgQd4ykD1eJAWd_0cVg@mail.gmail.com>
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On 8/24/12 5:49 PM, Simon L. B. Nielsen wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 24, 2012 at 1:52 PM, Thomas <freebsdlists@bsdunix.ch> wrote:
>> On 8/19/12 4:46 PM, Paul Schenkeveld wrote:
>>> On Thu, Aug 09, 2012 at 11:44:02AM +0200, Roberto wrote:
>>>
>>> Having read all responses so far I think a summary of the issue at hand
>>> is:
>>>
>>> - Uname only reports on the kernel version, currently we do not store
>>> nor report the userland version.
>>>
>>> - People would love to know what version of FreeBSD, both kernel and
>>> userland, is currently installed/running.
>>>
>>> - Userland can either be upgraded using make {build,install}world or
>>> by freebsd-update, neither logs the version to which userland was
>>> updated.
>>>
>>> - Reporting the userland version is not trivial as not necessarily all
>>> parts of userland are of the same version, especially after doing
>>> an buildworld/instrallworld with a changed src.conf or make.conf.
>>>
>>> - We currently reflect the last booted kernel version in /etc/motd.
>>>
>>> My suggestion would be:
>>>
>>> - Teach both installworld and freebsd-update to maintain manifest
>>> files of what is installed and log that update, place all manifests
>>> somewhere under /var/db and the update log in /var/log.
>>>
>>> - If the above log message is well defined and includes the method
>>> by which the update was done, it can be parsed by /etc/rc.d/motd
>>> and we could extend the information in /etc/motd to also include
>>> information about userland. Something like:
>>>
>>> <tool> <timestamp> <who> <current-version>
>>> portupgrade 2012-08-19T16:26:41 paul 8.3-RELEASE-p4
>>> installworld 2012-08-19T16:31:36 paul 8-STABLE-r231558
>>>
>>> - Having manifests of what's installed, one could check if all files
>>> are stil the right version, if older manifests are not discarded
>>> when performing an update this could also detect files that were
>>> not updated for whatever reason or that were reverted, i.e. by
>>> restoring some backup. E.g.:
>>>
>>> Current userland version: 8.3-RELEASE-p4
>>> /usr/sbin/named is at 8.3-RELEASE-p2
>>> /usr/bin/openssl is at 8.3-RELEASE
>>>
>>> - Such a time-consuming check could be run from periodic (weekly or
>>> monthly perhapd) and be a valuable tool to warn sysadmins of files
>>> not being what they should be.
>>>
>>> - Adding, in the case of freebsd-update, a signature to the manifest
>>> files that can be checked against the signature in the freebsd-update
>>> master repository could turn this tool into something of a integrity
>>> checking tool.
>>>
>>
>> Sounds good if you have a just a few systems. In a large environment,
>> snmp is quite common to collect release information.
>>
>> AFAIK snmp uses kern.version and kern.osrelease for this.This sysctls
>> are read only. Any ideas how this issue can be fixed for
>> snmp in a easy way?
>
> Make the snmp daemon not do it that way and support magic new scheme
> which we will hopefully come up with?
>
It would be nice if this could be part of a MIB for bsnmpd(1) in base or
net-snmp in ports.
FreeBSD-MIB for bsnmpd(1) uses uname(3) for freeBSDVersion
OBJECT-IDENTITY but according to the comments in FreeBSD-MIB.txt it can
be overwritten.
Not sure what net-snmp is using.
Regards,
Thomas
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