Advantage / Disadvantage to install asterisk from CVS was: [Asterisk-Dev] Asterisk run as non root

[Tzafrir Cohen]

Hi

On Tue, Sep 13, 2005 at 04:52:54PM -0600, Joseph wrote:
> On Tue, 2005-09-13 at 18:12 -0400, Paul wrote:
> > Joseph wrote:
> > 
> > >I'm follows installation instruction from wiki and there is section
> > >"Running Asterisk not as root"
> > >It is not difficult to follow, but time taking.
> > >
> > >Why isn't this section implemented as in cvs if it is considered as
> > >security issue?  I'm sure it wouldn't take much time to write a small
> > >script that would change all the file permission and ownership during
> > >installation.

That script needs to create a user. Or is it a group? With what name?
That part needs to be run only once.

Now you need to chown/chmod a bunch of directories. And also make sure
asterisk is never run without -U . Or is it -G? Or both? Or is it the
job of safe_asterisk to do that?

No, this is the job of the installer/packager. Wanna prove me wrong?
Please write that script. 

> So what other think are advantages / disadvantages of compiling from CVS
> vs installing it from distribution.
> 
> Distribution Advantages:
> 1.)  Easy installation,
> 2.) All configuration (permission/ownership) is taken care of.
> 3.) Easy upgrades.

Of the system. The most important "upgrade" is the case of maintinance 
upgrades.

Basically distros tend to think of Asterisk as part of a Linux box,
whereas the folks here think of Asterisk and Asterisk alone, naturaly.
Not that I'm blaming them. I want the Asterisk developers to focus on
developing a good Asterisk package and leave the ugly integration bits
to others.

> 
> Distribution Disadvantages:
> 1.) Slow response to bug fixes. 

I'm not sure that this is the case with Debian.

> 
> Compiling from CVS Advantages:
> 1.) Faster bug fixing process.
> 2.) Ability to communicate with developers directly.

Building Asterisk debs from CVS v1-0 is really not that complicated. CVS
HEAD is more complicated, but mostly due to the work not done yet.

But then again, with Asterisk (much more than with other software
packages) users are expected to build from source. There are still too
many hard-wired options that require compile-time modiifications. e.g:
the busy-detect algorithm in dsp.c (right?).

> 
> Compiling from CVS Disadvantages:
> 1.) Installation require few extra steps (not that difficult)

And if you have more than one box?

> 2.) Configuration (permission/ownership) is Do It Yourself; hence pron
> to errors and it takes longer to upgrade.

The process is much more manual and less repeatble. Even after you've
automated it yourself, you don't have a large numbe of people having
exactly the same problems you have (remember what "stable" means: stable
bugs :-( ).

-- 
Tzafrir Cohen     icq#16849755  +972-50-7952406
tzafrir.cohen at xorcom.com  http://www.xorcom.com