[K12OSN] synaptic and K12LSTP repositories

[Petre Scheie]

Petre Scheie wrote:
> 
> 
> Eric Harrison wrote:
> 
>> On Sun, 21 Aug 2005, Mike Heins wrote:
>>
>>> Quoting Les Mikesell (les at futuresource.com):
>>>
>>>> On Sun, 2005-08-21 at 13:22, Mike Heins wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> In practice, webmin seems to be pretty secure and there are a lot
>>>>> of people using it successfully. I will admit to placing it a couple
>>>>> of places where the system administrators don't have strong Linux
>>>>> knowledge. But I don't think it is the right way to run a railroad
>>>>> if you have an alternative.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Unfortunately, 'the alternative' is years of experience...
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I didn't mean to try and sound like I was talking from the top
>>> of a mountain, not at all. Though I have the years of experience,
>>> I recognize that not everyone does.
>>>
>>> I was just explaining why I think it is not configured into
>>> k12ltsp by default.
>>>
>>
>> You missed the main reason Webmin is not installed by default...
>>
>> The official Webmin packages copy the root password from /etc/passwd
>> (or /etc/shadow) when the package is installed. During the process
>> of installing the operating system, the root password is empty.
>> If Webmin is installed as part of the OS, it ends up with root
>> rights and no password. From a security perspective, the results
>> are non-optimal ;-)
>>
>> The two choices were to maintain a customized Webmin package that
>> works around this issue or to have an option to install Webmin
>> after the install was complete. Maintaining customized packages
>> can put a huge drag on K12LTSP development, thus the post-install
>> option was quite attractive.
>>
>> -Eric
>>
> And I must say the post-install option worked like a champ.  Thanks for 
> building that option, Eric.
> 
> Petre
> 
Does MESD maintain apt repositories?  Going back to my original question, is there a 
reason why Webmin can't be installed via Syanptic?  Well, yes, the reason is that 
Synaptic comes configured with the stock FC repositories.  My real question is, if not 
Synaptic, what do people use to give novices a grahpical tool for seeing what packages 
are available and what packages they have installed, etc.  (Perhaps Webmin is a bad 
choice for an example because its security implications have forced the workaround that 
Eric has created.)  Is there a gui for yum?

Petre