Re: [cobalt-developers] Fwd: CERT Advisory CA-2002-20 Multiple Vulnerabilities in CDE ToolTalk

[Jay Summers <jay@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> The Cobalt Raq appliance is for all of us that want an appliance.  If you do
> not need an appliance, by all means upgrade all you want.
 
Precisely! I work for a small company. We decided that we wanted to move
into a dedicated server so that we had more control over things. This was
back when the Raq2 first came out. I was a Graphic Designer by trade and had
no *nix experience so the Raq was a great choice for us (webserver with
training wheels).

> For the rest of us, Cobalt is keeping a restricted system to try and keep us
> safe and secure.  I know, the box is not safe and secure without adding other
> things and turning off a few others.  But, the operating system as shipped,
> used to be Red Hat 6.2, but Cobalt removed some things and modified others.

I realize that they can't come out with every new bell and whistle out
there. After time, I needed more functionality than the Raq2's came with
(eg. PHP, MySQL).

> With doing this, it is much more complicated upgrading the modules than fixing
> them.  If it is not acceptable to you, do it yourself or buy another product.

I could be wrong, but your tone seems to imply that I was complaining
about Cobalts and their lack of upgrades. I was only providing my experience
for the benefit of others on the list. This is a developers list isn't it?
But don't you think it's odd that I've been able to upgrade Apache on my
Raq2's for the past two years and Sun/Cobalt can't do it at least once?

Unfortunately, like William say's in his follow up I find myself growing out
of my old beloved Raq2's.

<quote>
But in general as my admin skills improve I find myself starting to
drift away from the Cobalts. Mostly because of the difficulty of
maintaining or upgrading software, that Cobalt developers have not had
the time do address.
</quote>

Regards,
Jay