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What I'm about to say applies just as much to appliances but making people think they can do everything with one-click breeds a load of ignorant and lazy "sysad

What I'm about to say applies just as much to appliances but making people think they can do everything with one-click breeds a load of ignorant and lazy "sysadmins" with very capable, very connected and extremely exploitable Linux servers sitting exposed (by design) on home networks. The commoditisation of VPS (and cloud) servers brings exactly the same problem. Updates aren't automatic by default and so many VPS holders are devs sitting in Windows without a clue about anything past the `sudo apt-get install lamp-server^` they read on a forum. Months pass without updates and before you know it, there's a remote update a script can catch. Webapp updating is another thing altogether. Relatively few are well packaged and even fewer have nice automatic update migrations. So they go stale and get exploited. The [immediate] future of internet security looks pretty dismal.

ddh29 12y ago
What a miserable, snotty curmudgeon you are.
- oliwarner 12y ago
  I don't necessarily disagree but that doesn't have a bearing on what I said.
amirmc 12y ago
This is true because only a few people are looking at how we should be writing, deploying and maintaining software for the cloud and embedded devices. There are other approaches out there which are getting more mature by the day, which (imho) are far superior. For example you can look over the Mirage work for an intro to the Unikernel approach. http://openmirage.org/wiki/overview-of-mirage http://openmirage.org/wiki/overview-of-mirage
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
userbinator 12y ago
I think there's a need for a small, self-contained system that is just so simple that it should be inherently secure and thus never need updating; HTTP and many of the related protocols are over a decade old, if not more. They should be so well-understood enough by now that a simple, correct implementation is possible. Maybe it will not have the latest features, but that's not the goal here - reliability and simplicity is. Being able to host a personal site comprising a few static pages, which is something that would fit well with the goals of this project, shouldn't require all that much in the way of software; maybe even a full Linux kernel is overkill.
- amirmc 12y ago
  I definitely think you'd find the unikernel approach interesting and should take a look [1]. I've got a version of my website deployed this way too [2]. [1] http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2566628 http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2566628 [2] http://amirchaudhry.com/from-jekyll-to-unikernel-in-fifty-lines/ http://amirchaudhry.com/from-jekyll-to-unikernel-in-fifty-li...
  - lbotos 12y ago
    I've wanted to play around with this. Thanks for the great write up. Anyone know of a hosting provider/layer focusing on this workflow?
    - amirmc 12y ago
      Deploying to EC2 is an option [1]. In general, we want to make it easy for people to deploy to the public cloud and will release tools to aid this. [1] http://www.somerandomidiot.com/blog/2014/04/23/verb-your-own-noun/ http://www.somerandomidiot.com/blog/2014/04/23/verb-your-own...
      - lbotos 12y ago
        I guess what I meant was there any "heroku" like platforms that offer mirage. I've been kicking the idea around for a while (I think unikernel is the future of PaaS/SaaS/Cloud) and wondering what the field looks like. :)
blablabla123 12y ago
Have you ever wondered why "VPS (and cloud) servers" don't do the "sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade && sudo reboot" automatically? Anyways, if those Yuno people are smart enough, they do this once a day automatically via CRON. And if their systems are expensive enough, they consist of 2 redundant engines. I mean just think of a file server. Everybody can tell you how much of a security nightmare an FTP server is. Why? Probably because the ftp daemons are so complex and have so many options. So people turned to Dropbox and other expensive but simple solutions.
- Morgawr 12y ago
  I wouldn't like to perform update && upgrade (and also reboot!) automatically every day or so. Why? Because updates/upgrades are always something that should be overseen by a capable administrator. Sometimes updates break, sometimes they override your personal config files with less secure default files, sometimes the system crashes and you're left in an inconsistent and dangerous state, etc etc. I definitely don't want to automate my server's updates in such a way.
  - azernik 12y ago
    I haven't looked too closely at this particular project, but if I were writing something similar, I'd explicitly make it hard to access any of the security-related settings, and make the defaults (for which upgrades are tested) secure by default. In this case, changes to security settings to deal with new threats would be distributed through the package update mechanism, not overridden by it. That is, the really interesting target user here is not the one who will drop into the command line to tweak /etc/ssh/sshd_config and then get annoyed when their changes are overwritten on the next update.
  - blablabla123 12y ago
    If you allow little configuration options, you could as well allow to easily reset the server to default. I mean a zero configuration server cannot be compared to a server that has > 100 users. The latter usually has a lot of custom settings which would a) easily get damaged during updated b) be lost when resetting the whole thing There is definitely a need for easily manageable servers that should be low on customization and maintenance.
ibisum 12y ago
> breeds a load of ignorant and lazy "sysadmins" I think that what is happening here in the hosting sphere is the same thing that happened in the OS/user space, inasmuch as packaging has become the solution to solving the layers of abstraction. Todays .ipa archive is yesterdays .app bundle, was last centuries filesystem-containing standalone .exe, is todays 'one dock fits all' deployable-application solution. Whereas in systems past the user was required to absorb a cognitive load of abstraction ("C:\DOS"), yet today we have far friendly flick and execute interfaces, the same is true of sysadmin abstractions becoming less and less significant and more and more point and click. Yesterdays 'tar xvf somesources.tar.gz && cd somesources && ./configure && make install' is todays 'docker run -i -t someapp', and so on .. But yet, we still must face the quandry that the more these abstractions become compartmentalized, the more we can just pile new crap on top and end up with new abstractions requiring eventual compartmentalization, ad infi...
atmosx 12y ago
Let's kill python and ruby too. Since they make OO programming accessible to non-Lisp hackers, we might end up with many buggy applications!
pjc50 12y ago
This ship has kind of sailed; there are plenty of routers out there running Linux that aren't updated either. Not to mention the Internet of Exploitable Lightbulbs coming over the horizon.

ddh29 12y ago

What a miserable, snotty curmudgeon you are.

oliwarner 12y ago
I don't necessarily disagree but that doesn't have a bearing on what I said.

amirmc 12y ago

This is true because only a few people are looking at how we should be writing, deploying and maintaining software for the cloud and embedded devices. There are other approaches out there which are getting more mature by the day, which (imho) are far superior. For example you can look over the Mirage work for an intro to the Unikernel approach. http://openmirage.org/wiki/overview-of-mirage http://openmirage.org/wiki/overview-of-mirage

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

userbinator 12y ago

I think there's a need for a small, self-contained system that is just so simple that it should be inherently secure and thus never need updating; HTTP and many of the related protocols are over a decade old, if not more. They should be so well-understood enough by now that a simple, correct implementation is possible. Maybe it will not have the latest features, but that's not the goal here - reliability and simplicity is. Being able to host a personal site comprising a few static pages, which is something that would fit well with the goals of this project, shouldn't require all that much in the way of software; maybe even a full Linux kernel is overkill.

amirmc 12y ago
I definitely think you'd find the unikernel approach interesting and should take a look [1]. I've got a version of my website deployed this way too [2]. [1] http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2566628 http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2566628 [2] http://amirchaudhry.com/from-jekyll-to-unikernel-in-fifty-lines/ http://amirchaudhry.com/from-jekyll-to-unikernel-in-fifty-li...
- lbotos 12y ago
  I've wanted to play around with this. Thanks for the great write up. Anyone know of a hosting provider/layer focusing on this workflow?
  - amirmc 12y ago
    Deploying to EC2 is an option [1]. In general, we want to make it easy for people to deploy to the public cloud and will release tools to aid this. [1] http://www.somerandomidiot.com/blog/2014/04/23/verb-your-own-noun/ http://www.somerandomidiot.com/blog/2014/04/23/verb-your-own...
    - lbotos 12y ago
      I guess what I meant was there any "heroku" like platforms that offer mirage. I've been kicking the idea around for a while (I think unikernel is the future of PaaS/SaaS/Cloud) and wondering what the field looks like. :)

blablabla123 12y ago

Have you ever wondered why "VPS (and cloud) servers" don't do the "sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade && sudo reboot" automatically? Anyways, if those Yuno people are smart enough, they do this once a day automatically via CRON. And if their systems are expensive enough, they consist of 2 redundant engines. I mean just think of a file server. Everybody can tell you how much of a security nightmare an FTP server is. Why? Probably because the ftp daemons are so complex and have so many options. So people turned to Dropbox and other expensive but simple solutions.

Morgawr 12y ago
I wouldn't like to perform update && upgrade (and also reboot!) automatically every day or so. Why? Because updates/upgrades are always something that should be overseen by a capable administrator. Sometimes updates break, sometimes they override your personal config files with less secure default files, sometimes the system crashes and you're left in an inconsistent and dangerous state, etc etc. I definitely don't want to automate my server's updates in such a way.
- azernik 12y ago
  I haven't looked too closely at this particular project, but if I were writing something similar, I'd explicitly make it hard to access any of the security-related settings, and make the defaults (for which upgrades are tested) secure by default. In this case, changes to security settings to deal with new threats would be distributed through the package update mechanism, not overridden by it. That is, the really interesting target user here is not the one who will drop into the command line to tweak /etc/ssh/sshd_config and then get annoyed when their changes are overwritten on the next update.
- blablabla123 12y ago
  If you allow little configuration options, you could as well allow to easily reset the server to default. I mean a zero configuration server cannot be compared to a server that has > 100 users. The latter usually has a lot of custom settings which would a) easily get damaged during updated b) be lost when resetting the whole thing There is definitely a need for easily manageable servers that should be low on customization and maintenance.

ibisum 12y ago

> breeds a load of ignorant and lazy "sysadmins" I think that what is happening here in the hosting sphere is the same thing that happened in the OS/user space, inasmuch as packaging has become the solution to solving the layers of abstraction. Todays .ipa archive is yesterdays .app bundle, was last centuries filesystem-containing standalone .exe, is todays 'one dock fits all' deployable-application solution. Whereas in systems past the user was required to absorb a cognitive load of abstraction ("C:\DOS"), yet today we have far friendly flick and execute interfaces, the same is true of sysadmin abstractions becoming less and less significant and more and more point and click. Yesterdays 'tar xvf somesources.tar.gz && cd somesources && ./configure && make install' is todays 'docker run -i -t someapp', and so on .. But yet, we still must face the quandry that the more these abstractions become compartmentalized, the more we can just pile new crap on top and end up with new abstractions requiring eventual compartmentalization, ad infi...

atmosx 12y ago

Let's kill python and ruby too. Since they make OO programming accessible to non-Lisp hackers, we might end up with many buggy applications!

pjc50 12y ago

This ship has kind of sailed; there are plenty of routers out there running Linux that aren't updated either. Not to mention the Internet of Exploitable Lightbulbs coming over the horizon.