Building servers with Gentoo

Randy Kahle · n00b Joined: 10 Jan 2003 Posts: 22 Location: Tucson, AZ

I seek advise on the best way to install Gentoo on a set of servers.

The machines are in roles of firewall, smtp (qmail) server, web server, etc.

I seek a configuration that is hardened and that only will be updated to fix security problems.

I understand that release 2004.1 now has the capability to upgrade software only for security fixes. I also understand that there is a version of Gentoo supporting SELinux.

I am confused about the state of the various releases and permutations.

Which release should I use (and master) to support my need for secure, stable, and reliable Gentoo based servers?

30726 · Veteran Joined: 24 Sep 2003 Posts: 1501

You'll definitively want to do an install with SELinux if security is a big issue.

Check out this for more info about Gentoo Linux and SELinux. The Gentoo Linux SELinux install guide can be found here.

As for security-only upgrades, it's not yet availabe in portage AFAIK, but if you emerge gentoolkit, glsa-check will provide a temporay solution until security-only updates are merged into portage.

jstuart · n00b Joined: 03 Dec 2002 Posts: 57

Is there any way to upgrade to a hardened linux on an existing server? IE say I installed gentoo normal and have now decided I want to upgrade to the hardened kernel and selinux?

Can I do this? If so, is it "relatively" easy? Can I do this remotely? (IE over ssh)

Ok, ignore the first part of this question.

However, I see that devfs doesn't work with selinux. What about udev?
_________________
Jeff Stuart
JAHGU (Just another happy Gentoo User)