Ugh...that should have been *unwaiveable* instead of _unavailable_.
On Sun, Dec 30, 2018 at 6:04 PM Trevor Vaughan <tvaughan(a)onyxpoint.com>
wrote:
Hi Chuck,
So, I agree with you all the way up to FIPS. Unfortunately, the tracing
that we've done on the FIPS 140-2 requirement through various ties to
policy and FISMA *appears* to be unavailable except by the President of the
US, by named position. Now, it's possible that this tracing is incorrect
but I have yet to find anyone that could find another *documented*
interpretation that overrides the Congressional mandate as handed down to
NIST and inherited through the 800-53 and CNSS 1253.
That said, FIPS only applies for the "protection of sensitive
information". If you don't have any sensitive information (i.e. 100% test
and eval environment with independent credentials that have no access to
any other system) then fire away.
Also, this mandate only applies to organizations directly under the
Executive and Legislative branches of Government. The Judicial branch can
do what it likes.
Sorry for the slight rant, this is one of those particular items that just
drives me nuts in terms of laws (not policies) that people like to try and
ignore when it gets inconvenient.
In terms of packages, I completely agree with Charlie that it's really
simple to just grab all of the packages through various means so the RHN is
really just making legitimate use more difficult for systems like yours and
rapid CI testing systems. We specifically do not use one of the many ways
of circumventing the process so that we don't run afoul of any licensing
rules or restrictions.
Trevor
On Sun, Dec 30, 2018 at 12:35 PM Chuck Atkins <chuck.atkins(a)kitware.com>
wrote:
> Why use CentOS when RHEL developer subs are free?
>
>
> For our environment where we have a small deployment of only 2-4
> machines, CentOS is much easier to manage off-line on an air-gaped
> network. Mirroring the CentOS repos is pretty easy to do with reposync and
> monthly drops to a web server on the red network. The CentOS workstations
> can then just point to the yum repos on said webserver and everything works
> like it's supposed to. Trying to do this with RHEL-proper is frustrating
> at best. A satellite server is way overkill for a deployment like this and
> setting up the clients for a "normal" yum repo requires removing and
> uninstalling all of the subscription / rhn packages. There's also the
> simplicity of only have 2 system repos to worry about to get everything
> available in CentOS (Base + Updates) vs dealing with the dozens of channels
> needed in a RHEL subscription to get the same set of available packages. I
> certainly get the value in all of the various options for managing large
> enterprise deployments but CentOS is just much simpler to deal with for us
> in a small deployment and software-developer-centric environment. We end
> up using both RHEL and CentOS for different use cases but need to apply the
> same security framework and settings to both.
>
> With regards to allowed security configurations, as a contractor we've
> never had issues with DSS and CentOS being allowed so long as we apply all
> the appropriate RHEL rules and can appropriately justify where we diverge.
> The only ones I've run into that end up not applicable across the two have
> been FIPS related, which we have to disable anyways to accommodate third
> party unsigned kernel modules for the Nvidia driver. The STIGs after all
> are just a guideline and place to start from so you can adapt it to your
> own environment with appropriate tailoring and justification, not a fixed
> "it has to be this way". Most of the government entities we work with
(DoD
> and DoE) use RHEL for their infrastructure servers and end-user
> workstations but CentOS for their projects and developer environments.
> Many of the DoE labs we work with even use CentOS on their large scale HPC
> deployments (LANL, Sandia, LLNL, etc.) while others use RHEL proper.
>
> - Chuck
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--
Trevor Vaughan
Vice President, Onyx Point, Inc
(410) 541-6699 x788
-- This account not approved for unencrypted proprietary information --
--
Trevor Vaughan
Vice President, Onyx Point, Inc
(410) 541-6699 x788
-- This account not approved for unencrypted proprietary information --