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To upgrade or not to upgrade?



I have a RedHat Linux 4.1 installed on my computer at home. I use kernel v.
2.0.29, XFree86 ver 3.2, and the versions of apache httpd and sendmail that
comes with RH 4.1.

Normally, I use Linux as an individual workstation offline, with the
various daemons running. If I connect it to the Internet using SLIP I kill
inetd (which includes telnet, rlogin and stuff), httpd, sendmail and
syslogd, and X runs only on a UNIX-domain socket.

My question is: should I go into all the trouble of upgrading any of the
things I mentioned:

1. If I should upgrade to RH 4.2 - can I do it using the 
misc/ftp-upgrade script? Or if not, what is the easiest and
least time/resource consuming way. (without buying a CD of the distribution)

2. Should I update the kernel to version 2.0.30, or is v 2.0.29 OK too?

3. What about XFree86 3.3? I heard about the stuff, that users of X can get
root privileges, but should it concern me and was it solved in the 3.3
version. 
Normally, I prefer to compile the source code rather than download a binary
or rpm. But downloading and compiling X can take ages, and I'm rather
limited on space.

4. Apache - basically, I can d-load the source, compile and replace the
server binary with the newly compiled one - or can I?

5. Should I download the latest version of sendmail (8.8.6) and compile it?
Would I have to somehow rebuild or update my sendmail configuration files,
so it won't report that they belong to an older version?

BTW, If I manually compile a new version instead of an older one, is there
any way I can adjust the version of the program in the rpm database? (like
changing package "apache-1.0.2" to "apache-1.2"?) 

	Shlomi Fish
----------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish                                Smart Link Ltd.
Home: shlomif@ibm.net
Work: shlomi@slink.co.il

If mathematics had been deduced with the same logic as the Jewish Kashruth
regulations, then it would have been illegal to divide by all numbers
between -1 and 1.


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