[NTLUG:Discuss] installing redhat 6.2

[Chris Cox]

David wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 11, 2002 at 07:45:09AM -0800, bryn konti wrote:
> 
>>possible development.  The usual minimal partition
>>configuration for the workstation is a swap partition
>>size equal or greater than 2X the amount of your
>>memory a / (root) directory and boot directory. Red
> 
> 
> Usually people do include a swap partition, but for many people it's not
> necessary.  In the days of desktop machines with 256M or 512M RAM, it's
> a very unusual person who actually fills their RAM and needs to turn to
> swap space.
> 
> There is also a good reason not to use swap space:  security.  Things in
> RAM may get written to swap, if you have one.  That includes things
> that you may not want written to swap, like your cryptographic keys,
> passphrases, and your secret plan to overthrow some small country.  Your
> adversary could read this information easily from your swap partition,
> if they ever get access to your machine.  Better to dispense with swap,
> and keep all that secret information in a nice, volatile and forgetful
> RAM chip.  After all, RAM is cheap.
> 

This is true.  Also, you shouldn't use a journaled filesystem for
some of the same reasons.  No kernel modules, no plug&play, no
hotplug USB/Firewire, no local compilers, no SysV style init, etc.
However, you need to weigh security "paranoia" against the fact that
many servers run services that make these issues look like a joke, in
comparison.  Security policies need to be carefully considered.  Indeed,
one could argue that Unix/Linux is the wrong choice if you want to
really be secure (and the alternative is definitely not Windows... hope
that didn't need to be said).