[K12OSN] Linux kernel DoS exploit -- don't need root!

[Les Mikesell]

On Mon, 2004-06-14 at 15:35, Huck wrote:
> to patch with apt-get will the following work?
> 
> apt-get update kernel 

With apt, you have to:
  apt-get update
first to pick up a fresh list of available updates,
then since the kernel has multiple versions doing:
  apt-get install kernel
will give you a list of available kernels.  You have
to pick the one you want from the list and repeat the
command with the version included.

> oddly enough yum takes hours to complete a simple update
> while apt-get take less than 20 minutes...
> is this because of the size of repositories or just some funkyness with
> my test-server?

Yum keeps headers for each package in a separate file and updates
them every time you run.  If a lot has changed it may take a long
time to pull all the updated headers.  Otherwise there shouldn't
be a huge difference and yum knows more about installing kernels.
Usually (always?) it will pick the right one and make it the boot
default.

> I ask, because it seems any time I've done a complete upgrade that my
> config settings get all messed up(overwritten).

It is up to rpm packages whether they overwrite config files or not
and in some cases neither way is right so apt/yum version upgrades
don't always work but they should be safe for updates within a release.

---
  Les Mikesell
   les at futuresource.com