buffer overflows, non-x86 architectures (Re: Which Red Hat?)

Tue Feb 18 14:37:05 PST 2003

On Tue, Feb 18, 2003 at 01:07:19PM -0800, Chuck Yerkes wrote:
> Quoting J C Lawrence (claw at kanga.nu):
> > On Mon, 17 Feb 2003 21:54:34 -0800 Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:
> > > Quoting J C Lawrence (claw at kanga.nu):
> > >> SGI Indy's (the purple mini-towers) also tend to be readily available
> > >> and extra NICs for them are cheap enough.
> > 
> > > I've seen those around, and wouldn't mind having one.  
> > 
> > They seem to come on the market in spurts.  Indigo2s may be more readily
> > available now as the Indys fall wayback in age.
> 
> I've used Irix since 3.x.  I have a couple Indy's here.  I
> *like* SGI; I've pushed for them hard at resistant companies
> and I've used them at post production (film/tv) houses.
> 
> Again, I like SGIs machines; I hate that the (used to) sell
> proprietary $$$$ RAM and kept costs for users very high.
> Extra costs for NFS, eg., even in 5.x kept them out of a very
> large bank I worked at because it was one of a list of things
> that irked us a lot.  (and a test buy - a presentor - that died
> and needed 4 MONTHS to get fixed was the nail in that coffin).
> 
> When I was working with trading floor Sun's (SunOS 4) and DECs
> (ultrix/OSF1) a lot and admiring the solidity with Ultrix uptimes
> exceeding 500 days of several machines, a friend offered that
> working with the SGI's was a lot like working with dragsters and
> race cars.  You worked on them, got them set for a run and, man!,
> nothing was faster.  The Sun's and DECs were nice trucks and busses
> that didn't go fast, but always chugged along.
> 
> Like the hardware, like Irix.
> 
> But I have to say Irix is the last OS I'd put on a machine that
> needed to be secure.  It's lovely and aimed for user friendliness
> and at speed.  It's history is long with security holes. So fine,
> they live behind a firewall.  [hell, we put dedicated firewalls
> in front of Tandems that never crashed, but offered ZERO way to
> restrict access to them].
> 
> It's also questionable whether a desktop SGI wants to be
> a home firewall in California.  They run REALLY hot and suck
> power.  Their case design, I swear, seems to be built it until
> it catches fire, then take that last item out.
> 
> A friend starts using his Indigo when his home office is cold.
> 
> 
> AS for non-x86, yes, when a BIND buffer attack hit the net, I was
> away.  I was amused to find named.cores but not too concerned that
> the kiddies were overflowing my buffers with MIPS code.
> A watcher just restarted named (chrooted, anyhow).

The one thing which really irked me about SGI was the way sales worked.
Everyone was on commission so none of the sales droids were interested
in selling a small Indy to an enduser as they didn't make much money on
it and it took too much time for them. I worked for SGI and had several
friends who tried to buy an Indy. :-(

-- 
Regards, Ulf.

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Ulf Zimmermann, 1525 Pacific Ave., Alameda, CA-94501, #: 510-865-0204
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