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On Wed, Sep 03, 2003 at 09:55:36AM +0300, Petre Rodan wrote: |
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> I'm sorry to disturb you, but I couldn't help noticing that currently |
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> there are 15 patches to qmail, and this number has the tendency to |
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> rise with every ebuild. |
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I expect it to be around 20 when I'm done with the ebuild. |
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> I feel that DJ Bernstein did a great job creating the world's safest |
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> MTA. This is one of the main reasons sysadmins use it. My point is |
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> that even if there are reasons for upgrading the product (to add new |
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> features and such) the issues with not doing it are considerable and |
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> will likely out-weigh them. |
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DJB himself has mentioned that he uses some of the patches in some |
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cases, and just for the most part does not have time to contribute to |
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maintaining qmail anymore. |
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|
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I have personally considered forking qmail in the past, simply to |
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go thru a validation of the security of the patches and distribute them |
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officially integrated. I simply do not have enough time to attempt this |
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until I am finished university, unless somebody is willing to sponsor me |
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to do it as some part-time work (I presently work part time at the |
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university to cover some of my tuition). |
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> The commotion generated by smtp-auth patch is an example. |
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SMTP AUTH (both directions) and STARTTLS both require more setup than |
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just emerging the package. If you don't set them up, then qmail behaves |
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in a functionally identical way to how it did before. |
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The security hole (bugtraq id 8196) is caused solely by |
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misconfiguration. I've put code into place (not yet committed to CVS) in |
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the startup scripts for qmail-smtpd that will detect the possible |
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misconfiguration and error out. |
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> Now please don't get me wrong, I appreciate your work, I simply fell |
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> in love with Gentoo but I think that those who would like to emerge |
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> qmail should have the choice of selecting the exact features that can |
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> make them happy. Simply masking versions doesn't sound to good, maybe |
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> some USE switches would ease the way. I'm wondering maybe |
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> qmail-1.03-x.ebuild can be made to inherit some patch related switches |
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> from a file that is system-specific. |
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I will definetly look at an optional flag to disable the majority of the |
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patches that could have security issues anyway. |
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-- |
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Robin Hugh Johnson |
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E-Mail : robbat2@××××××××××××××.net |
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Home Page : http://www.orbis-terrarum.net/?l=people.robbat2 |
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ICQ# : 30269588 or 41961639 |
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GnuPG FP : 11AC BA4F 4778 E3F6 E4ED F38E B27B 944E 3488 4E85 |
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