Trevor,
Tracing whether a reposync method is still license compliant, it’s still pretty easy. I
have an agreement with my software manager where I take one of my licenses on RHN, or
whatever we call it now, and give it the name of my system. The “host name” means nothing
and can be something like “SHORTID-ACAS” or “SHORTID-CI1.” That allows you both to
quickly asses whether a license is still in use during annual reviews. Red Hat is hardly
in a position to complain since you bought, but don’t appear to have allocated, a license.
Small numbers of systems are easy to manage like that. I’m fully compliant with licenses.
Charlie Todd
On Dec 30, 2018, at 6:05 PM, Trevor Vaughan
<tvaughan@onyxpoint.com<mailto:tvaughan@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@kitware.com<mailto:chuck.atkins@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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