On Mon, Sep 29, 2014 at 8:36 AM, Lamar Owen lowen@pari.edu wrote:
I read the thread before replying, and didn't see anyone mention that, if one needs an open source stay-on-a-point-release setup, one should investigate Scientific Linux, which does do this. Yes, you can stay on 5.4 and get only the security updates. This is one of the differences between SL and CentOS. (now, they only build for releases where upstream releases sources; thus, if you're on EL4, no updates for you.....).
The latest shellshock update from SL, for SL 5.4 x86_64 (which would install on C5.4 unmodified, I would imagine), is: ftp://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/54/x86_64/updates/security/bash-3.2-33.el5_11.4.x86_64.rpm
For certain scientific applications, there are serious reasons to stay at a point release, and SL supplies to this niche.
If I were to need this specific niche here I would run SL at a point release without hesitation.
This is one of the reasons why I run SL on a computer that needs to stay at an earlier version because of certain in-house software. A little more detailed description about how security updates are provided in SL can be found near the bottom of this blog:
http://blog.toracat.org/2013/05/install-security-updates-in-rhel/
Akemi