[wplug] Redhat moves - help please

[Vanco, Don]

Scott Bourns [scott at scottbourns.com] wrote:
> I just inherited responsibility over a remote web server
> running RH 7.3,
> with Ensim control panel installed. 
	Which means it's a VM being hosted by an ISP -or- it's a stand-alone
server being hosted by some IP??  Hardly matters for the sake of this
discussion I suppose, but the ISP in question may have ideas on what you can
(and cannot) do....

> 1. How do I check that 7.3 is as updated and patched as it can be?
	up2date --show-available

> 2. Once 7.3 is updated, what should I do about the fact that neither
> it or 8 or 9 are going to be supported anymore? I just don't see the
> smart upgrade move here.
	Why does there need to be an upgrade move at all?  The "death" of
consumer RH is one of the most misunderstood things in the history of Linux.
Just because RH will no longer be the one to crank out the RPM do you think
the distro is going to die??
	If it were me I'd not worry about it - there will be LOTS of places
making update RPMs available, like FreshRPMs and their ilk.
	Also - you _can_ install updates from source, or <egads> from
another RPM based distro!
	I won't even get started on using yum or apt - but they are also
highly viable solutions.

	Sure, you could switch to another distro as suggested - but why?  If
it's only a webserver you shouldn't even have that many packages installed
to present that much of a vulnerability risk.

> BTW, the server is not in mission-critical use yet, so I have
> a little time to learn.
	If it's ever going to be mission critical you _need_ to be on RHEL
or SuSE... unless you're misusing the term...

Don