[CentOS] Asterisk and VOIP was Re: CentOS for non-tech user

[Brian Mathis]

On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 2:43 PM, Ron Blizzard <rb4centos at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 1:18 PM, Brian Mathis <brian.mathis at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Uptime is a red herring and is generally meaningless.  You'd be better
>> off performing updates and reboots at least once a month, so you don't
>> need to worry about any big changes that might come with not updating
>> for almost 2 years.  If you updated now and something broke, you
>> wouldn't know what did it.  If you keep up incrementally, you can
>> catch the small things as they come.  You also don't have a "delicate
>> flower" that you need to worry if it won't come up after the next
>> reboot.  That's not a good situation to be in.
>
> Except, in this case, you could probably go forever without updating.
> CentOS/Asterisk is just the switch's embedded OS as used here. I've
> maintained many Nortel switches (based on Wind River UNIX) which
> weren't patched for years -- no need to update the OS unless there was
> a specific problem or a necessary new feature. But I do think Rob
> wants to update this system. The problem is, unlike computer networks,
> people are very intolerant of phone downtime.
>
> --
> RonB -- Using CentOS 5.3

The difference is that CentOS is a general-purpose OS that can be used
for many things, and has a much bigger installed base.  That makes it
more of a target and would likely be included in scanning tools.  A
custom OS running on a PBX might also have vulnerabilities, but it's
also probably not a big target because of the diversity of systems out
there and relative limited utility one would have if such a system
were compromised.

That you tend to tend to think of it as an "appliance" running the
phone system does not change the fact that it's actually a full-blown
server OS with the same issues as other servers.