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On Thu, Jun 16, 2016 at 4:11 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com> wrote: |
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> |
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> I don't see the part where all these latest fancy container thingymagicies |
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> are not really just "embed everything in everything" |
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> |
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> We've known for years the dangers of embedding stuff in packages (it hardly |
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> ever gets updated properly) |
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> |
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Well, that strikes me as being true of these self-contained packages, |
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but it isn't necessarily true of containers in general. |
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I run most of my services in containers, and they're just Gentoo |
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installations with a really small world file. Things are just as |
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up-to-date as they would be if I ran it all in a single host. |
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Now, if you're the sort of person who just grabs some random docker |
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image from who knows where, then sure you're getting a big bundle of |
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stuff that may or may not be maintained for security. This is no |
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different. |
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I'm sure there will be people who provide these all-in-one packages |
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and carefully update them for upstream security flaws. And there will |
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be a lot more providers who don't. |
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Chromium is a good example of this. Gentoo tries to unbundle as much |
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as it can, but if you just do a make install on it you end up with a |
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bazillion bundled libraries. Google does a very good job of keeping |
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them all up to date, but they're not a typical case. |
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FWIW - the subject of this thread suggests that this is some kind of |
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"official" Gentoo thing. As far as I can tell somebody took it upon |
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themselves to make this available for Gentoo, but it is not in any way |
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endorsed by the distro. Of course, if somebody wanted to package it |
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up and maintain it we probably wouldn't have any issues with having |
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the package manager in the repository. After all have other binary |
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distro package managers in there. That doesn't mean that Gentoo is |
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doing anything to ensure that whatever random repository you point it |
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at is up to date, any more than if you emerge debootstrap. |
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Oh, and while I generally agree with everything in the linked |
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Maintainers Matter blog post, I'd hardly call it a security audit. It |
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just points out in general terms the sorts of problems that this kind |
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of approach can lead to. |
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-- |
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Rich |
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