Re: [gentoo-hardened] Keeping gentoo-hardened alive (WAS: latest kernel exploit patch for vmsplice coming?)

[Ned Ludd]

On Tue, 2008-02-12 at 11:15 +1000, Geoff Kassel wrote:
> Another wagon jumper here :)
>
> My fledgling hosting and software development business is based on hardened
> Gentoo, so I'd hate to see this project die.

I work for a rather large online game hosting company and we also rely
heavily on the use of hardened for nearly all DIA facing nodes. I've
gone out of my way to make sure it's stable for what we need. No matter
what I'll be maintaining something somewhere and I'm always willing to
share my work, which should work for ~90% of all enterprise cases. So
don't worry there. We Hardened/Gentoo are short staffed at the moment..
Not about to go KABOOM.. 

Anyway my biggest problem is I lack the time to test user configurations
of services in bugzilla. That's alot of work! And many times people are
reporting whats already been fixed elsewhere. Another one of my biggest
problems is I fix something locally and forget that it never got pushed
to the tree. So when I sometimes see bugs in zilla I simply ignore them
because in my mind I think they are non problem.

> I'm quite time and money poor as
> a new business owner,

Hey don't worry there. This is not a finical problem or a lack of
hardware. As well as a dev I'm also a sponsor to Gentoo of many of it's
core infrastructure boxes. (10G backbone to 1G IBM Blades)

> but I have a fair skill set to offer when I do get
> time. I'm a reasonably experienced Python, PHP, and C programmer. (Although
> my C is a bit rusty, having lost ground to the others through under use.)


> I've got a formal methods and QA background, if that's useful in any way.

Hell fscking yeah it is.

I'd actually like to talk with you more about the Hardened-QA topic
later if we could.


> I'm
> handy with VMWare, so I can test experimental kernels and Portage trees, if
> that's not already covered by a build farm elsewhere.

It pretty much is covered. I've got a few hardened tinderboxes running
to test these various setups.
* hardened/amd64/multilib
  * hardened/ia64
  * hardened/ppc
  * hardened/x86

http://tinderbox.dev.gentoo.org/html/


> I'm reasonably
> literate, if documentation needs to be written or revised.

Yeah actually that might be a good idea.
Feel free to review hardened-toolchain.xml

> Is there a way the time-poor can help out? I can immediately offer some
> hosting, if that's not already covered by the Gentoo Foundation - monetary
> donations are probably a few months away. (Is there a way to donate
> specifically to the hardened project, by the way?) I can also offer some CPU
> time on two mid-range hardened Gentoo servers with shared storage in a
> high-availability data centre in Australia for compilation nodes, if that's
> any use.

Not needed. As noted the game hosting provider I'm affiliated with has
spare 632 blades across 75 chassis at the moment that are all Dual and
Quad Core. I rarely ever need more than 2 per datacenter.

> How may I be of assistance?

Go take a peek at bugzilla and see if there are any open bugs related to
hardened with are BOGUS, or can be resolved. If you have some tips for
others. Perhaps offer them.
Or.. 
Well other than asking how you can help.. How about trying to look at it
from a perspective of.
"How can I best use my existing skills to make the hardened project a
little more kickass?" 


> Kind regards,
>
> Geoff Kassel.
>
> On Tue, 12 Feb 2008, Asaf Gery wrote:
> > OK,
> > I would also jump on this wagon... :-)
> > My experience with C is minimal, although I do have some. I have years of
> > experience with Java, I love Linux in general and specifically Gentoo.
> > How can I support the effort?
> > Asaf
> >
> > On Feb 11, 2008 8:21 PM, Mateusz Mierzwinski <mateuszmierzwinski@××.pl>
> >
> > wrote:
> > > RB pisze:
> > > >> help?  Know this, you are not alone.
> > > >
> > > > Ditto.  I'm not always the sharpest tool in the shed or have the
> > > > greatest C skills, but am willing to help with whatever is needed.
> > > > I've even considered devship (and been "recruited"), but was unsure I
> > > > wanted to join in the politics and whether my existing contributions
> > > > were... sufficient.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > RB
> > >
> > > Hi! I have C programming experience and I can help. Still got some work,
> > > but I can wrote some code in free time ;).
> > >
> > > Mateusz M.
> > > --
> > > gentoo-hardened@l.g.o mailing list

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