From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Apr 8 07:16:11 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D330B37B401 for ; Tue, 8 Apr 2003 07:16:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from pa-plum1b-166.pit.adelphia.net (pa-plum1b-122.pit.adelphia.net [24.53.161.122]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 13A4F43FCB for ; Tue, 8 Apr 2003 07:16:11 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from wmoran@potentialtech.com) Received: from potentialtech.com (working [172.16.0.95]) h38EFHJP013082; Tue, 8 Apr 2003 10:15:23 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from wmoran@potentialtech.com) Message-ID: <3E92DE70.70609@potentialtech.com> Date: Tue, 08 Apr 2003 10:36:32 -0400 From: Bill Moran User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.2.1) Gecko/20030301 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Miguel_Gon=E7alves?= References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Old version support X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 08 Apr 2003 14:16:12 -0000 Miguel Gonçalves wrote: > Hello fellow BSDers! > > I am going to install a FreeBSD 4.8 server to be used only as > a SMB server for a small network of Windows clients. I intend > to install it and leave it running without much administration > intervention (except for security bugs because we all know that > the other bugs are hard to find in FreeBSD). > > Given the current End-of-Life policy for FreeBSD releases I was > wondering how can I know about security problems for unsupported > FreeBSD releases. For example, if I install 4.8 know and if in > 2 years a kernel security bug is found that affects only the 4.x > branch I suppose that a SA wouldn't be released. This could be > less far-fetched: I could be running 4.4 know and I wouldn't > know about security bugs that I should be aware of. > > How is it possible to cope with this without installing a current > version? Sooner or later you're going to have to upgrade ... eventually things aren't supported anymore. If you subscribe to security-advisories@freebsd.org you'll get notifications of problems as they are found. The emails list the versions that have been patched, so you'll know when support stops. This page has a lot of information on policies: http://www.freebsd.org/security/index.html -- Bill Moran Potential Technologies http://www.potentialtech.com