[arch-dev-public] dropping tcp_wrapper support

[Dan McGee]

On Wednesday, July 13, 2011, Stéphane Gaudreault <stephane at archlinux.org> wrote:
> Le 13 juillet 2011 08:10:26 Dave Reisner a écrit :
>> On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 12:55:51PM +1000, Allan McRae wrote:
>> > On 13/07/11 12:27, Dave Reisner wrote:
>> > >I'd like to pick up something Dan proposed about a year ago, which is
>> > >dropping support for tcp_wrappers. Its last official upstream release
>> > >was 1997, and we currently add 10 patches to it from 3 different
>> > >distros
>> > >in order to make it compile, fix bugs, and add features (ipv6). We
>> > >also
>> > >add in an odd default of ALL: ALL in the config file, meaning that the
>> > >first thing most people do on a new arch system is add a line to
>> > >/etc/hosts.allow along the lines of 'sshd: ALL' (or just delete the
>> > >blanket deny. To my knowledge, there isn't anything tcp_wrappers does
>> > >that iptables can't do more eloquently, and without the need to be
>> > >linked against an external library.
>> > >
>> > >Therefore, I'd like to propose that we just dump this. The rebuild
>> > >list
>> > >would be small, at 20 packages:
>> > >
>> > >archboot
>> > >dante
>> > >esound
>> > >exim
>> > >gdm
>> > >inetutils
>> > >libmysqlclient
>> > >mailutils
>> > >net-snmp
>> > >nfs-utils
>> > >openldap
>> > >openssh
>> > >quota-tools
>> > >rrdtool
>> > >socat
>> > >stunnel
>> > >syslog-ng
>> > >tftp-hpa
>> > >vsftpd
>> > >xinetd
>> > >
>> > >Is there any pressing reason to hang onto this aging library?
>> >
>> > For reference:
>> >
>> > Dan's original email about this:
>> > http://mailman.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2010-September/01
>> > 7872.html
>> >
>> > and the follow-up a few months later:
>> > http://mailman.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2010-December/018
>> > 754.html
>> >
>> > Given the lack of strong opinion either way last time, I'd lean on
>> > dropping the package just because it seems to have no upstream
>> > development and all the patching that is required.  So just create a
>> > rebuild list and get as many of those packages rebuilt without
>> > tcp_wrappers and go from there.
>> >
>> > Allan
>>
>> and just to follow up, the todo list for this is:
>>
>> http://www.archlinux.org/todo/86/
>>
>> dave
>
> No objection, but a comment.
>
> You started that discussion and created the todo list after only 10 hours. As
> we are not all in the same timezone, it is likely that some people could not
> express their opinion within such a short period. I would suggest to wait at
> least 24 hours before taking action.
>
> Stéphane

I would say the same, but a todo list isn't a to-done list, so keep
that in mind. He also pointed out that I got little to no feedback
when I asked about this both a year and six months ago, so
expectations are pretty low this time around. I'm sure if there were
serious objections people would raise them and we could address them.

This is worthy of a news article once we move packages to core only
because it could expose some services people didn't previously expect
to need to protect.

-Dan