hi,
i am not so good in this field, didn't have much knowledge iether.
i wonder is there any possibility for my system to be hacked is i am using the perivious release of linux such as redhat 5.0 or 6.0?

this is important to me because i am planning to install a old linux system (probably redhat 5) on an old PC.

if there are possibility... could i prevenge those possibility?

If you open it up to a network, yes, I'd say your RedHat 5.0 will be cracked into very quickly.

Even the latest releases of RedHat already have security patches out, for example anyone who can choose the name of a file on your system can manage to execute code as the first person to try a `find / -print0 | xargs -0 file`, which is rather common behaviour for a systems administrator.

If you don't connect it to some kind of network and you let nobody into the room, well... but why?

You can put a firewall that will allow you to go out, and nobody to come in, but even so there are risks!

Why do you want to install an old RedHat? You can install a new RedHat even on PCs that are ten years old... it's not as if you had to *buy* the new version.

Just a side note, where did you get that copy of the old distro's?

I'm looking for some really old copies and cant find any ISO's, etc for the old distro's...I wanna install one on a test box here and have some fun...a good way to learn about security, etc

thanks paranoid,

but is that true that i can install a new RedHat even on PCs that are ten years old? isn't that could slow down the performance of that old PC? i dont want to wait 10 minutes for a simple job... even i dont have to but the new version, but how about the performance?

Grim Reaper, about the copy of old distro's... i got it from my friend. he get into this field long time ago, so he got have all of that CD. i just copied from him. before this, every problem of mine will be solved by him, but now he's not around anymore.

How much RAM on your old PC? Forget about the rest...

Do put at least 128 MB of swap though, if you don't have a lot of RAM.

It's not the newness of the distribution in itself that will slow down the computer. In the last ten years the Linux kernel has got bigger, a lot of other things have got bigger; that reflects on RAM only. 2MB of RAM wasn't enough even for 1995 Slackware, believe me :-)

If you're not installing X, and have 16MB of RAM, go for the new distro, no question about it.

If you want X, and have 64 MB of Ram or less, the problem will be more client apps like mozilla and such, that want LOTS of RAM. That probably won't be much better with old distros, and anyway the client apps are what YOU want !

A new RedHat will probably want to install KDE/GNOME with more bells and whistles than you want, but when I installed RH8.0 the other day the installer asked me about the performance level of my PC and whether I wanted the icons to change when the mouse moved over them and such new-fangled things. Other window managers take up much less CPU and RAM.

You want to play with Linux? You'll want an up-to date distribution to be able to install recent software... In Microsoft world, a program will run under Windows 95 or later, but in Linux world a programmer will say "hey, that new lib will save me hours of work", and bingo the software he writes will need that lib, which will somehow need Linux (kernel) 2.2 or later, and there you are.

I'd say (I did say :-)) go for the new distro, and if it's a bit slow look at what can be done to accelerate things (stripping, kernel recompiling without unnecessary things, less hungry apps); if you're installing Linux to play with and to learn that will be an excellent first subject, much better than "how do I get this new software to run on my old distro without upgrading" :-)

you can check redhat s ftp or mirros for old dist they have.