PMAS seems fine
Now running for quite some time, the spam filter works like before, thought there is still a lot of logging around. The only problem was a crash of one of the worker processes due to the inability to share a socket. I mentioned it to Process but there is no data in the log files to give a clue on what happened.
And: I’ve seen it before, with the 3.0 version.
Process announced a final release later this week but instalation will be deferred due to a short holiday. But that will not be a problem, assuming it will keep running like now.
MySQL as well
Switching to MySQL 5.1 pays off. The server runs for weeks now, without a problem. Does a lot of paging:
20203A8D MYSQL051_SERVER HIB 4 3957781 0 03:37:53.53 914726 4604 M
[MYSQL051,MYSQL051_SRV] 36832Kb
but that is not a surprise given the nature of the beast. I’ve seen it grow to about 60Mb of virtual memory, without any problem. Though I must admit it hasn’t had to handle a high load, so far.
Patches
DEFCON 16 paid attention of OpenVMS, from a hacker’s point of view, and some weaknesses have been found: Some in old versions of WASD (pre 8.0), the Multinet FINGER daemon and teh SMGSHR shared image. Solution to these issues are easy: Upgrade WASD to the latest versions (where these vulnerabilities have been fixed), disable FINGER if you’re using the Multinet TCPIP stack (or install the patch supplied by Process), and install the patch that HP supplied for SMGSHR.
That last one is to be done, it has been downloaded already, as well as some other patches that were released after the last update.
Today I learned that as a result, more code has been scrutenized for possible problems and some others have been found for “medium” severeness, It means that risk isn’t that big, and few systems will actually be vulnerable. Details are not disclosed, nor will be. But patches will be released to address these issues. As soon as these apear, they will be installed.