Re: [gentoo-user] Choosing between system profiles: hardened and desktop for desktop installation.

[james]

On 07/04/17 23:16, Walter Dnes wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 04, 2017 at 01:37:38PM -0400, james wrote
>
>> W. Dnes is the king of minimalist here, so when he gives advise
>> realize it has decades of experimentation to get to where he is on
>> minimization.
>
>   Not exactly "decades".  I first started linux in late 1999 or early
> 2000.  The minimalist approach was a side-effect of me being cheap.
> Even though I have a newer machine as my "hot backup" waiting in the
> wings, I want to run my older machine into the ground first.  10 years
> ago I was running a 450 mhz pentium3 with 256 megabytes of ram.  Today
> I'm running a 2008 Dell with Core2 Duo and 3 gigs of ram today.  I have
> a newer i6 with 8 gigs of ram as the hot backup.  Running an older
> limited machine forces you to optimize.  The Gentoo USE flags give me
> the control to do the utmost minimization.
>
>   I run the plain default/linux profile, and ICEWM as my WM and no
> "desktop environment" (as per my sig).  The less attack surface, the
> better.  Do not run the Flash plugin or the Java plugin.  If you
> absolutely have to do so, use it inside a VM (e.g. QEMU).  I have an
> aggressive handcrafted iptables firewall.  In addition, my little LAN
> sits behind a NAT-ing router, and I disable UPNP.  That covers my
> approach to security.
>
>   I run mostly stable, except where an app I want/need is only unstable.
> Gentoo currently defaults to gcc-5.4.0.  I've enabled 6.3.0.  I have to
> enable ICEWM 1.3.12-r1.  The regular stable version built under gcc
> 6.3.0 segfaults 1 or 2 seconds after starting.
>
>   I used to run with USE="-* blah blah blah".  I no longer do that, but
> I aggressively disable USE flags, until something breaks, then I back
> off.  My current USE line (it's actually one long line)...
>
> USE="X apng bindist ffmpeg jpeg opengl png szip truetype x264 x265 xorg
> threads webp -acl -berkdb -caps -cracklib -crypt -filecaps -gallium
> -gdbm -graphite -gstreamer -iconv -introspection -ipc -iptables -ipv6
> -libav -llvm -manpager -nls -openmp -pam -pch -sendmail -tcpd -udev
> -udisks -unicode -xinerama"
>
>   Some of the above is over-ridden in package.use.
>

Well, now that's a good summary (starting point) for a minimized gentoo
system. The gentoo-devs have been discussing changes to the profiles,
but I'm not certain where that has ended up. I just use the 'default'
and go from there, or the simplest 'hardened' profile that is cpu
relevant. I'm not sure of the most straight forward way to compare
flag setting (the difference) between any two profiles for a new
installer to examine; perhaps somebody else has a straight forward
method to compare current profiles, within a given architecture?

Surely at look at the contents of @system set is a good starting point
for a new gentooer to see what he gets no matter which profile he
selects?  Then there is the 'experimental' profiles that the devs keep
moving around; who knows what's up with those mavericks....


Hopefully the AliceF [1] GSoC work will result in some structure to to
follow for a minimized and hardened kernel going forward. Even in the
gentoo-sources kernel there is much that can be stripped out, reducing
bloat at the least and probably reducing attack venues too. During this
process, I keep several bootable kernels available so reverting is easy.
Perhaps there is a gentoo wiki page that at least outlines the manual
processes (a structured approach) as users go down the pathway of
stripping out what their workstation does not need in a kernel?

Perhaps someone has a slick, home-spun, tool that readily identifies
what can be additionally stripped from the current  kernel offerings on
the pathway to minimized_nirvana ?


Then there's NFTables; not sure anything useful is published on
NFTables, nor how effective it is for a workstation firewall... [3]

Thanks Watler for sharing. Increasing the population of (OpenRC et. al.)
minimalists is always welcome as our numbers are growing every day;
not that one is bound to OpenRC to be a gentoo_minimalist.



hth,
James

[1] https://blogs.gentoo.org/alicef/
https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-soc/threads/2017-06/

[3] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Nftables