[oclug] Debian 2.1 and apache

[Milan Budimirovic]

On Wed, 2002-10-16 at 03:23, B McKee wrote:
> Good Morning All
> 	I decided I want to start running my own webserver.  Strictly personal goof 
> around learning stuff.  I'm hoping for 10 hits a month.  My budget for this 
> project is less than $50  :-)
> I managed to assemble a 486dx66 w/ 20meg of ram and a 2 gig drive.
> 	I have seen quite a few comments that Debian was a good choice for older 
> equiptment and I had a CD from the back of a book I'd bought.  The install 
> went pretty well (after I figured out what the heck dselect was telling me).  
> I tried doing a few simple things and was impressed with how 'snappy' it 
> seemed.  Then I realized - it's running a 2.0 kernel!
> 	So, (finally,) here is my question.  The only thing I'm going to use this 
> box for is Apache with ssh for remote administration.  Maybe someday it will 
> be a mail server too, but not anytime soon.  While I expect I will have to 
> update both apache and ssh for security reasons, and install a firewall - is 
> there any good reason to update the rest of the system?
> B McKee

In a word, YES. If your machine is visible over the Net it is a **very**
good idea to be running code that is still being maintained. Debian 2.1
is about 5 years old now, and I don't believe anyone is making available
any security patches for it. Apart from the existing security holes,
there won't be a lot you can do if a new one pops up next week and
there's no patch for it.

Get the latest stable version, 3.0. It doesn't cost you anything, and
will save you a lot of pain down the road.