Practical UNIX and Internet Security, 3rd Edition

Software Management Systems

A software management system is a set of tools and procedures for keeping track of which versions of which software you have installed, and whether any local changes have been made to the software or its configuration files. Without such a system, it is impossible to know whether a piece of software needs to be updated or what local changes have been made and need to be preserved after the update. Using some software management system to keep up to date is essential for security purposes, and useful for non-security upgrades as well.

Fortunately, nearly all Unix systems provide some form of software management for the core components of the operating system and the applications distributed with it. The most common approaches involve using management packages—precompiled executables and supporting files—and managing the software source code from which executables can be compiled and installed.

Mirror, Mirror

Whether you use packages or source code, you need to get the files from somewhere. Vendors typically make their applications available on the Internet—through the Web or through an anonymous FTP site. With very popular operating systems or applications, however, a single web site or FTP site often can’t keep up with the demand to download it, so many software vendors arrange to have other sites serve as mirrors for their site. Users are encouraged to download the software from the mirror site closest (in network geography) to them. In principle, all ...