Openwall GNU/*/Linux

Openwall GNU/*/Linux (also known as Owl) is an independent, open source and completely free operating system that has been designed from the ground up to bring security into open environments. It’s suitable for servers, as well as virtual and physical appliances.

It’s distributed as Live DVDs for mainstream architectures

Anyone can download Openwall GNU/*/Linux for free, as it is distributed as Live DVD ISO image of approximately 1GB in size, archived with the GZ compression algorithm resulting in files that are half the size than that of the ISO image.

You can start the live system in normal or safe modes

The operating system features a minimal boot menu that allows the user to only start the live and installable system in normal or safe modes by pressing the Enter key on a highlighted boot option.

Experienced Linux users can press Tab on a selected boot entry to edit its options and start an existing operating system that is installed on a local drive for rescue purposes only.

Don’t expect a graphical desktop environment

Despite the fact that the Live DVDs have approximately 1GB in size, the OS has no graphical desktop environment. It will drop users to a shell prompt where they must use the “settle” command to install the distro or the “setup” command to configure the live system, then exit the shell to boot.

The Openwall GNU/*/Linux setup script will allow you to configure localization, set the root (system administrator) password, select a timezone, configure the network and run the shell.

A secure operating system with remote SSH access

All things considered, Openwall GNU/*/Linux is a command-line, secure and minimal operating system that features remote SSH access. It is based used for deploying dedicated servers, but also to rescue broken OSes or install Linux distributions.

What is new in this release:

• Recent changes in Owl 3.1-stable include update to RHEL 5.11-based Linux/OpenVZ kernel along with Red Hat's fix for a local privilege escalation vulnerability on x86-64 (CVE-2014-9322). So please upgrade.

What is new in version 3.1:

• Recent changes in Owl 3.1-stable include update to RHEL 5.11-based Linux/OpenVZ kernel along with Red Hat's fix for a local privilege escalation vulnerability on x86-64 (CVE-2014-9322). So please upgrade.

What is new in version 20120818:

• The Linux kernel has been rebased on the latest from OpenVZ's RHEL5-based "testing" branch.
• binutils, tcsh, xinetd, and OpenSSL have been updated to new upstream versions, and assorted minor changes have been made to many Owl packages.
• The system has been rebuilt with the new binutils, which required some tweaks in various packages (now included, so further rebuilds work seamlessly), and new ISOs and OpenVZ templates have been generated for i686 and x86_64.
• Overall, this mostly conservative update is a precursor to a similar update to Owl 3.0-stable, and to more aggressive changes in Owl-current.

What is new in version 3.0:

• Since the 3.0 release, a Vim packaging error has been corrected, a vulnerability in the patch(1) program (CVE-2010-4651) and two vulnerabilities in OpenSSL (CVE-2010-4180, CVE-2009-0590) have been fixed, vsftpd has been updated to 2.3.4 (which fixes CVE-2011-0762), and patchutils was updated to 0.3.2.

What is new in version 20100323:

• Updated the kernel to OpenVZ's latest from their "rhel5" branch (2.6.18-164.11.1.el5.028stab068.5 released on 2010/03/18) with Red Hat's patches up to 2.6.18-164.15.1.el5 added (apparently prepared by Red Hat on 2010/03/01, released and announced on 2010/03/16), and with some minor changes of our own. We call the resulting kernel version 2.6.18-164.15.1.el5.028stab068.5-owl1. Compared to earlier "rhel5" kernels, this update fixes a large number of vulnerabilities of varying impact in various kernel subsystems, which may or may not have been exposed in specific circumstances.