Thank you all for helping to clarify this.

Thanks

Greg Machin
Systems Administrator - Linux
Infrastructure Group, Information Services

From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of Ross Walker
Sent: Thursday, 24 February 2011 3:51 p.m.
To: CentOS mailing list
Cc: <centos@centos.org>
Subject: Re: [CentOS] current bind version

On Feb 23, 2011, at 9:08 PM, "Machin, Greg" <Greg.Machin@openpolytechnic.ac.nz> wrote:

Hi.

I have had an enquiry from the Network and Security guy. He wants to know why CentOS 5.5 /RHEL 5 is using a very old version of bind “bind-chroot-9.3.6-4.P1.el5_5.3” when the latest release that has many security fixes is on 9.7.3 . I understand that its to maintain a known stable platform by in introducing new elements etc .. Is there an official explanation / document that  I can direct him to.

Please check out:

https://access.redhat.com/security/updates/backporting/?sc_cid=3093

RHEL maintains application binary interfaces during the lifetime of their releases. Only for applications that can no longer be feasibly maintained through backporting (ie firefox) do they update the version mid release.

A lot of people don't understand the backporting way of maintaining a stable platform across a release, it took me a while to appreciate it.

-Ross