[GTALUG] Installing Anaconda with Python 3 on 32 bit linux (Ubuntu ver 16.04 )

D. Hugh Redelmeier hugh at mimosa.com
Sat Apr 20 12:37:35 EDT 2019


| From: o1bigtenor via talk <talk at gtalug.org>

| I'm
| finding that
| there are some elements in *nix land that are insisting that because users
| are so very very lax at updating their systems that the distro must itself
| not only offer the updates but that said updates MUST happen.

It is perhaps reasonable that that be an option.  It feels wrong that
it be mandatory.

As a desktop user, I treat Firefox updates as urgent and mandatory.
Firefox is my main exposure to Bad Guys.

Some of the customers for my sysadmin services (i.e. my family) don't
like updates.  They are of the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"
school.  And it is true that sometimes I've broken things through
updates.  But I still have faith regular updates are a net win.

There are some parallels between vaccine and updates.

| To whit - -
| Canonical has moved to this system in their implementations of both
| snapd and also lxd. It is possible to reduce the frequency of the upgrades
| from a daily inspection and possible update/upgrade to a maximum of
| a month long period without update/upgrade.

Are you saying that updates are mandatory, but only for snapd and lxd?
That sounds a bit odd.

Is it only security updates that are mandatory?

I don't use snapd and lxd.  Abstractly, both need to bridge between an inside
environment and an outside one.  Are the updates purely to the
inside, to the outside, or both?  Could the updates be required to
make this bridging correct?

I thought that one of the goals of snapd and of container systems was
the decouple versioning of inside and outside.  What other purpose is
there for snapd, for example?

| I found out the hard way that this was a MUST from the software. Myself
| I prefer to update/upgrade periodically - - - usually checking to make sure
| that the software isn't going to get borked because the upgrade has flaws
| in it (even more fun when the system gets borked due to flaws in the
| software!!). It was suggested that it would be possible to skirt around the
| constant update/upgrade cycle by using a firewall rule to hinder the forced
| reach out from my system to 'mother ship'. Well that joy set up a system
| that after such an update/upgrade request was blocked - - - well the system
| would shut itself down. It was only after the second such incident that I
| started investigating and by the fourth I could call the trend. Now I have
| the issue of having directories that I am unable to remove even using rm -r
| but there is a very long and definitely not simple technique whereby maybe
| I will be able to purge my server of said mess.

Wow.

It would be interesting to know what the rationale for this is.
There's a chance that the reason is reasonable.

It's open source.  You could rebuild it without the mandatory
update feature.  Or you could file a bug report.  Or you could accept
this loss of control.  Or you could walk.

| Hopefully not too much rant!

Interesting to me.


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