3 ms·

And this is why just about every embedded Linux device more than a few years old runs an ancient kernel with known vulnerabilities.

imtringued 8y ago
Well if you're running them headless then running armbian with a recent kernel will work on a lot of boards. The big problems come when you want driver support e.g. proprietary GPU drivers for ARM GPUs don't work because they were written for an old kernel api and ARM would rather focus on selling new GPUs than supporting older ones for sake of the tiny SBC niche.
jnurmine 8y ago
Some of those embedded devices are not even designed to be updated on the field. And some have support planned for a limited time and then anything resembling support is dropped. No company is going to support a product forever without getting money for it. So either the support is priced in or it is not, and if it is not, the product is correspondingly cheaper but then you get what you get. And people tend to select cheap, so there are no or few updates. Bottom line: embedded Linux devices with outdated software and security holes are that way through conscious intent, really. Running aftermarket firmware sometimes helps (the consumer), but only if there are no crazy things like binary blobs involved, since porting those is unlikely to be feasible.
- walrus01 8y ago
  In my opinion this is a big argument in favor of the security benefits and update ability, if you're a company putting thousands of remotely managed devices out into the field, for using an x86-64 architecture. Yes it might be more costly and expensive to have NUC sized things, but you can also be confident that you can run a fully patched OS on it in 12 or 15 years from now. If I had a core 2 duo based 1U appliance from 2007 somewhere I could quite reliably update it to Debian 9.6 or the latest centos.

3 ms·

And this is why just about every embedded Linux device more than a few years old runs an ancient kernel with known vulnerabilities.

by ryukafalz 8y ago

imtringued 8y ago
Well if you're running them headless then running armbian with a recent kernel will work on a lot of boards. The big problems come when you want driver support e.g. proprietary GPU drivers for ARM GPUs don't work because they were written for an old kernel api and ARM would rather focus on selling new GPUs than supporting older ones for sake of the tiny SBC niche.
jnurmine 8y ago
Some of those embedded devices are not even designed to be updated on the field. And some have support planned for a limited time and then anything resembling support is dropped. No company is going to support a product forever without getting money for it. So either the support is priced in or it is not, and if it is not, the product is correspondingly cheaper but then you get what you get. And people tend to select cheap, so there are no or few updates. Bottom line: embedded Linux devices with outdated software and security holes are that way through conscious intent, really. Running aftermarket firmware sometimes helps (the consumer), but only if there are no crazy things like binary blobs involved, since porting those is unlikely to be feasible.
- walrus01 8y ago
  In my opinion this is a big argument in favor of the security benefits and update ability, if you're a company putting thousands of remotely managed devices out into the field, for using an x86-64 architecture. Yes it might be more costly and expensive to have NUC sized things, but you can also be confident that you can run a fully patched OS on it in 12 or 15 years from now. If I had a core 2 duo based 1U appliance from 2007 somewhere I could quite reliably update it to Debian 9.6 or the latest centos.