Re: [tlug] CentOS using default/blank? password postgres

["Kenneth Burling" <burlingk@example.com>]

On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 3:24 PM, Hung Nguyen Vu <vuhung16plus+shape@example.com> wrote:

Hi,

My friend's CentOS 5.2 got hit by a scan and the bad guy was in.

<snip>

I see that you have gotten a lot of advise already, so I do not feel so bad about this post.  :P

While, I make it a habbit never to say that the way to fix a problem is to install a different OS (you would be saddened by how many people have that answer in the various Linux forums and irc channels), CentOS is quite possibly the exception to that rule for me.  :(

It is like Red Hat, but more stuborn and less stable.

My experience with it has been like pulling teeth.

They draw people in by saying that it is the non-commercial version of Red Hat, without bothering to mention that they started from square one on the package system and have only a fraction of the packages.  Those packages that they do have install in strange ways and strange places and don't follow most of the standard norms one would expect from the "same" package on any three other OS versions.  ^^;

It is the ONLY OS I have encountered (including the varios "evil"OS'es) that I would honestly suggest a person do an fdisk and install something else.  O.o;;


If he is your average end user, then there are variations of Ubuntu for every purpose.   Their server edition is actually rather easy to manage.  :P

If he is looking for a more techy experience, Arch or one of the BSD's may be just his thing.

I know, this is a bit of a mini-rant, and I understand that changing OS'es in most environments is not the best idea in the world. :P  It is probably best with him to stay with the abomination he is using.

However, if the server is not live yet, or if a quick cost bennefit analasys were to prove that CentOS was the demon spawn entity that I believe it to be, I think that it is hard to go wrong with Arche, Ubutu, or Free/OpenBSD.  :P