Hi Joel,

Joel Rees wrote on Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 01:51:19PM +0900:

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> So the first daily insecurities is over a megabyte of text. 

After installing, the directory /var/backups is still empty.
The first security(8) run will populate it,
reporting the SUID binaries, devices and configuration files
installed when installing the system.

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> Can I mostly scan through those

Well, you can take that as a (partial) list of what will be watched
in the future, but you probably shouldn't touch anything.

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> I could remove all the devices I know this old iBook will never have,
> but that's not even recommended general practice, is it?

No, don't do that, it is waste of time, and when you remove one too
many, you are in for trouble.

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> The bulk of the mail is a lot (40 or more?) of diffs with /dev/null
> for stuff that I don't have in /etc and /var. 

I suspect these files *do* exist in /etc, and the mail is telling
you they were added during the install.

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> then I looked in /var/backups and found the examples.

Those are not examples, but copies from /etc.

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> The third one is /etc/changelist , and I'm sure I want that one.

Without having a changelist installed in /etc, you wouldn't even get
such diffs.

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> Also, I'm wondering whether it would be more useful to send in
> the dmesg before or after I get /etc cleaned up.

Apart from the fact that there is almost certainly nothing to clean up,
changing stuff in /etc won't change the dmesg.  The dmesg only depends
on the kernel.  So, as soon as you are running the GENERIC kernel, you
are ready for grabbing the dmesg off the box, whatever the state of the
system may be.

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> Or maybe you have enough iBook G4 12 inch dmesg-es for 4.8?
> Nothing special, really.

No idea whether this particular one is needed more or less urgently,
and i suspect it is hard for anybody to tell without seeing it.
Thus, when installing a new machine, just send it.
An additional one does no harm, a missing one may be, well, missing...

Besides, having the same text printed on the box doesn't necessary mean
you have the same chips inside, as hardware hackers often deplore.

Yours,
  Ingo