I update Ubuntu 6.06 LTS and 8.04 LTS ... one has SSH issues, one does not

I have one swappable drive for my test box that has Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, Ubuntu 8.04 LTS and Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 triple-booting.

I hadn't connected the drive in 25 days, and I booted into both Ubuntus to do updates.

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS had 26 updates. None of them were for the OpenSSH problems that have plagued Debian-derived Linux distributions in the past week (and, more troubling, over the past two years). That's because 6.06 was made from Debian Sarge, which didn't have any of these problems, I think. However Ubuntu 6.06 came together, it isn't listed as having a problem, and that's why it didn't need any OpenSSL/OpenSSH updates.

Ubuntu 8.04, which I installed as a beta on this very box, had 81 updates ready to install. I figured there would be more, but since 8.04 LTS had its official release, the pace of updates has been slower than anticipated. But all the SSH-related software did update, as expected. I've never used OpenSSH/SSL on this install, so I have no suspect keys to worry about.

I guess all I can take away from this is that anybody who's been using Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (which, in easy-to-figure-out Ubuntu nomenclature was released in June 2006) can rest very easy. And while its packages aren't exactly the latest and greatest, Ubuntu 6.06 LTS will be supported with (mostly security related) updates until June 2009 -- a year and a month from now.

One more takeaway: Now that the problem with OpenSSH in Debian has been taken care of, I have a pretty good feeling that security and code-auditing across all of the major Linux distributions is about to get more intense and more complete. We can only hope.