[CHAOS] Re: [ale] Package Management System

[Jonathan Rickman]

On Friday 25 July 2003 20:34, Debrihmi wrote:
> I've been eyeing SuSE myself.  I'm very impressed with the 8.2 Live CD;
> and now that I know that the deps are handled, I might have to break down
> this up coming month and pick it up..

As an avid Slackware bigot/evangelist I naturally prefer Slack packages due 
to the simplicity. Normally I build everything from source and then build 
my own packages using checkinstall. That being said, I am fully aware that 
this is not going to cut it for most users. Therefore I second the Yast/RPM 
combo. I have toyed with it a bit and found it to be an excellent tool. 
However, I didn't get a chance to investigate how it verifies MD5 
signatures on the fly. Anyone care to investigate? I do not have an install 
to look at right now. 

More on Slack packaging and checkinstall. A lot of folks argue that 
Slackware is not suitable for use in a large install base because the 
updates are so difficult to deliver. Combining server standardization in 
specific roles can alleviate this problem. I have personally seen Slackware 
8.0 running on 84 machines in a data center staffed by 2 admins. I watched 
them deploy an OpenSSL update in less than an hour to all servers after 
spending 20 minutes downloading the new source, then compiling and building 
the package on a test machine. A bit o' perl thrown into the mix had all 
machines updated in no time flat. I happily sat there and took notes. :) 

-- 
Jonathan Rickman
X Corps Security
http://www.xcorps.net


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