SELinux last straw

[Karl Larsen]

Les Mikesell wrote:
> Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
>
>> Granted, the tools for SELinux are not as mature as the firewall
>> tools, but does that mean we throw out SELinux instead of improving
>> the tools?
>
> No one is arguing that it should necessarily be thrown out. But, 
> should people be using it without understanding it?
>
>> I have seen the same kind of arguments about just about every major
>> change. I remember people complaining about udev, and what was wrong
>> with using the standard /dev setup. I heard it about the change to
>> IPTables. I have heard it about HAL. Way too many of them boil down
>> to I know how the old system works, so why should I learn about this
>> new way of doing things.
>
> It's not just a matter of learning new things, and even if it were, 
> that would boil down to large sums of money in any business context.  
> Think about upgrading a large farm of servers that have multiple 
> network connections and the upgrade OS version detects the eth? 
> devices in a different order (real example, by the way...).  Now you 
> need the staff at each location to either relocate the cables to match 
> or edit a vast number if ifcfg-eth? files after they somehow figure 
> out what's connected where.
>
> > I am happy with the way things are working
>> now. Don't change things and make me learn a new method. I don't
>> care if this new method has advantages over the one I know.
>
> Try it this way: there's been 30 years of work aggregating and 
> improving with the old assumptions. That's why we like unix-like 
> systems.  Do you want to throw that out on the chance that an untested 
> new idea might be better?
>
>> Now, some of the new things are not going to work out, or in trying
>> to implement them, a better way may present itself. But if nobody is
>> willing to try the new methods, and work out the bugs that are
>> always going to crop up when trying something new, then there will
>> not be any progress.
>
> Research is always a good idea but most people want the testing to be 
> done before the new thing goes into production.
>
    Exactly. I have just so little knowledge about the above, and I have 
no desire to learn, even if there was a way to do so :-)
As example if SELinux just worked and I had to do nothing I would have 
it on now. But it doesn't and I do not plan to learn anything much about it.

    So there are a lot of us that expect a new installation of Fedora 
will work. No problems at all. But this seems to be working against the 
normal things expected of Fedora.



-- 

	Karl F. Larsen, AKA K5DI
	Linux User
	#450462   http://counter.li.org.