On Sat, 1 Dec 2001 01:46, Jesse Pollard wrote:
> > > Yes. Sun is the only vendor I've come across that ships packages that
> > > mess with /usr/local. They seem to think that a Sun package of bash
> > > for Solaris 2.6 (distributed from a Sun web site) should install to
> > > /usr/local/bin while a package for Solaris 8.0 (distributed on the
> > > install CDs) should be in /bin. This sort of thing really sucks when
> > > you are trying to manage a network.
> >
> > OpenBSD also does this. bash is in /usr/local/bin even though it's not
> > a port or a 3rd party piece, but an official package.
> >
> > I agree on that not being good practice. I don't know that rationale
> > for these, though.
>
> I can give a rationale, but can't promise it as the real one...
>
> These "packages" are NOT part of Solaris. They are "contributed" packages
> that may not be upgraded, may not be patched, nor are they required to even
> work.
>
> The /bin and friends are part of Solaris. If they cause security problems,
> then Sun is obliged to provide patches/updates. Not so for /usr/local. If
> theres a problem, you remove or don't install them.
>
> The stuff in /usr/local is not contractually maintained....

When an important security related package such as syslogd has a bug that allows it to be killed by users (or remotely killed if listening to the network) it's still not serious enough for Sun to fix it. Solaris 2.6 syslogd has been known as buggy for years and Sun have announced plans to never fix it.

I'm sure that the contrib packages will get updated when there's an upstream fix for a security issue.

I can't see any difference between the packages for /bin and the packages for /usr/local/bin in this regard. If anything the ones in /usr/local/bin have better support I think.

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