Hello All!

I recently got my Slackware configured and up and running fine. Now I must contend with maintenance.

My question is what is the easiest way to keep up to date with security issues. The Slackware site has daily security updates, but I simply do not have the time to follow up on each security problem.

Does Slackware have an auto-system like Debian and Windows that can ease the process of keeping the system secure?

Any suggestions will be appreciated.

Thank you,
Mords

To me it seems like slackware hardly ever has massive amounts of security problems. Personally, I subscribe to the slackware-security mailing list ... so if I check my email and notice a security alert, I will read it, and if it affects my system I will ftp the new package and do an upgradepkg on it. You could also create a filter for messages from that mailing list only containing keywords pertaining to the critical services you run on your server or desktop, stuff thats accessible via the internet like ssh, apache, etc.

There are 3rd party utilities out there such as swaret and slapt-get which will upgrade your system fairly easily. Combined with a cron job it could result in little to no interaction. The only problem is that due to misconfiguration, user error, programmers error, or whatever, some of these utilites have been known to break a system. If you do decide to use one of these utilites, make sure you do your homework.
HTH

Thanks for the info.

So you're saying, that unlike Windows, I don't really need to be that concerned about updating my system so frequently?

If you see the security advisories on slackware site...they aren't many of them considering we are half way through the year. Also if you notice, most of them are related to applications that come with slackware (unlike windows) & not related to slackware itself. So if you are using those apps (like apache or php or mozilla), you should upgrade.

I generally use swaret but with lot of restrictions on it...i.e. no kernel upgrade and various other packages that I would not want to upgrade. This way I accidently don't ruin my system.

You can easily setup a cron job for swaret and it updates your system automatically or for a more controlled operation you can just instruct swaret via cron to just download packages, which you can install/upgrade manually later.

Subscribing to slackware security mailing list is what you should absolutely do.

Tux,

Maybe I'm off here... but what I do is rsync mirror the patches directory and then run an upgradepkg on that when there is a security advisory that affects my system. I suppose I could do this all via cron, but I like to know that is happening.

Hey,

Have you heard of swaret or even slapt-get. I personally use swaret. It's an update utility and works flawlessly (at least for me). There's an argument as to which of the above two is better. I would not go into it...take a look at the websites and decide for yourself.

I haven't used slapt-get but you could setup swaret to update your system via cron. If you want more control, run swaret via cron so that i just fetches the newer packages when they are available and then you can manually go and update whichever affect your system. I would presume you could do the same with slapt-get.

Tux,

i do like |2ainman, basically i just subscribed to the slackware-security mailing list and so whenever patrick releases a critical update i get an email letting me know... then i just download the updated package and do an upgradepkg on it... personally, i find this to be a simple and effective method for staying up to date, i have no plans on installing slapt-get, swaret, or any other automated system...

i also monitor secunia.com every day cuz sometimes i will make my own updated packages while i wait for patrick's...

ummm, daily?? make sure you are monitoring the STABLE changelog and not the CURRENT one:

http://www.slackware.com/changelog/stable.php?cpu=i386

(the stable branch gets updates only when a critical problem is found, while the current branch gets all kinds of updates - which makes current non-suitable for mission-critical environments...)