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Is it possible that by using an old kernel like this one, you'd expose yourself to security vulnerabilities? I'm new to kernel programming. Is this submission

Is it possible that by using an old kernel like this one, you'd expose yourself to security vulnerabilities? I'm new to kernel programming. Is this submission suggesting that you downgrade your kernel to a 2010-era release in order to take advantage of the performance improvements, or is the submission showing some kind of modular component which you can integrate into your current kernel? If it's the former, then wouldn't you be pinning yourself to the old version of the kernel, so you'll have to integrate all updates by hand rather than receive them automatically during the normal update process?

greglindahl 12y ago
This kernel is what Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 is currently using. Red Hat maintains it, and writes patches for security vulnerabilities. It's no surprise that Sina developed, tested, and deployed this patch against what they were running in production.
- sillysaurus3 12y ago
  By using this kernel, will you be able to automatically receive security upgrades in the future? Or will you have to apply them manually and then recompile and install the kernel yourself? Is "developers have to apply security patches manually, then recompile and reinstall the kernel themselves rather than automatically" not a big deal in practice?
  - snus 12y ago
    All distro vendors backport critical fixes for the lifetime of the operating system. RHEL6 is supported at least until 2020. 2.6.32 is also supported by kernel.org still.
  - jewel 12y ago
    It's not a big deal, because you can automate it. As long as the patch applies cleanly (and it almost certainly will if the only vendor changes are security updates), it's going to be a pretty smooth process. You'd need to test the new kernel before deploying in production, of course, but you'd be doing that before rolling out a vendor provided kernel change, anyway.
  - easytiger 12y ago
    RH backport security patches and lots of features into seemingly old kernels.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

greglindahl 12y ago

This kernel is what Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 is currently using. Red Hat maintains it, and writes patches for security vulnerabilities. It's no surprise that Sina developed, tested, and deployed this patch against what they were running in production.

sillysaurus3 12y ago
By using this kernel, will you be able to automatically receive security upgrades in the future? Or will you have to apply them manually and then recompile and install the kernel yourself? Is "developers have to apply security patches manually, then recompile and reinstall the kernel themselves rather than automatically" not a big deal in practice?
- snus 12y ago
  All distro vendors backport critical fixes for the lifetime of the operating system. RHEL6 is supported at least until 2020. 2.6.32 is also supported by kernel.org still.
- jewel 12y ago
  It's not a big deal, because you can automate it. As long as the patch applies cleanly (and it almost certainly will if the only vendor changes are security updates), it's going to be a pretty smooth process. You'd need to test the new kernel before deploying in production, of course, but you'd be doing that before rolling out a vendor provided kernel change, anyway.
- easytiger 12y ago
  RH backport security patches and lots of features into seemingly old kernels.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]