[geeks] Compilers - safe on servers?

[Mark Benson]

I am in the process of evaluating Solaris 10 as a feasible server OS for 
our new production machine. Howerver, I've hit on a snag.

I can get SAMP, Ruby, gem and Rails via Coolstack and that all works 
swimmingly.

My problem is 'Passenger' (which is a Ruby Gem for using Rails apps 
through Apache2) requires gcc to compile a native portion of the gem. 
gcc isn't, of course, included on Solaris 10, you have to install Sun's 
dev tools (Sun Studio 11, right?)

The problem with *that* is I was always lead to believe this was a bad 
idea on production servers because in the even of a security breach the 
gcc compiler could be used to compile malicious code.

Any pointers? I had to use similar techniques to get stuff to work when 
I was assessing Ububtu server too. If there is a securiy risk it's not 
going to easy my mind any...

-- 

Mark Benson
http://markbenson.org/blog
http://twitter.com/MDBenson
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