#106 Download if 'i18n.ver' failed in Debian squeeze

[Daniel Minder]

In Debian oldstable (squeeze) rkhunter 1.3.6 is included. Since today, download of http://rkhunter.sourceforge.net/1.3/i18n/1.3.6/i18n.ver is failing. It would be great to have the language files back as long as oldstable is maintained.

[unSpawn]

• version 1.3.6 is from 2009. It is obsolete.
• Looking at rkhunter_1.3.6-4_changelog the last relevant patch is dated 2010.
• We don't support old versions and it should stop somewhere.

I can't and shouldn't make a decision for you so here's two choices:
0) If your primary concern is detection, being up to date and bug fixes then you should ditch 1.3.6 and change to the official 1.4.2 release outside as we ship it (we told people we don't support older releases many moons ago), or
1) if your main concern is "correctness" (as in adhering to whatever your distribution of choice feeds you regardless of the consequences) you should talk to Debian as that's their responsibility.

Regards,
unSpawn

[Daniel Minder]

Thanks for the quick answer. I agree that it is mainly a Debian problem and that Debian should fix it.

However, I notice two things:
1. The i18n files contain the message texts that are tied to a specific version of rkhunter. Updating these files is rarely needed, mostly when updating rkhunter itself. Thus, the question is if it needs to be updated everytime when the "--update" parameter is used.
2. Version 1.3.6 and 1.4.2 all access the same files programs_bad.dat, backdoorports.dat and suspscan.dat. These 3 files have not been updated since Nov 2011. Thus, if Debian backports important fixes of 1.4.x to 1.3.x rkhunter would still work if the language file was there.

I saw that previous versions are obsoleted when a new main release is issued. However, it would make sense to keep the files that are downloaded by rkhunter --update for a preannounced time and then deleted them to force people to move to a new version. But the current sitatuion is a little bit arbitrary.

[John Horne]

The language files won't be updated for old versions, so I would say just don't run the RKH with the '--update' option.

[Daniel Minder]

@John: language files won't be updated, but other files (programs_bad.dat, backdoorports.dat, suspscan.dat) might be. However, I can only decide to update all or none. Thus, simply NOT using --update option is actually not an option.

[unSpawn]

Language nor any .dat files will be updated for old versions.