Quoting Tobias Weisserth
I don't like your tone, young man ;-)
Seriously. Acting like this isn't helping anyone.
If you're so dependant on Tripwire then install the 8.2 RPM with the force and nodeps flags or try compiling the source from tripwire.org.
And if that doesn't work, then try another file integrity tool. There ARE alternatives to Tripwire, you know?
AIDE is a good lead.
In fact, I disagree with you on the MS SuSE comparison. It's totally the other way around. If SuSE acted like MS they would have just released the 8.2 RPM in the 9.0 branch and leave it that way since "it works".
The fact that SuSE is actually investing time into a good solution is very important to me. In the meantime, the security minded admin is certainly capable to use something else than Tripwire.
I took the 8.2 rpm and just installed it, no force or nodeps flags required. It works on every server I've installed it on. Sure, it's great and all to have all everything compiled exactly the same and binutils happy and all that. That's a goal. However, 9.0 was released MONTHS ago. There is a certain point where you say "Use what works". They don't need to abandon figuring out why tripwire does work or fixing it. It will need to be done for the next release anyway. Taking your time BEFORE a release is a laudable goal. After release, it's time to get things WORKING. In order to get tripwire to work, I have to manually install it. That's ANNOYING. The whole point of a distribution is so I don't have to install basic packages one by one. Tripwire is a basic requirement for any server. And, to be perfectly blunt, docilely sitting there and saying "Oh, well, I guess you can try aide or something..." is absolutely the wrong attitude to take. If suse doesn't think we care about tripwire, guess what? They probably won't either. Look back through the posts to suse-security, every time someone asks for advice on setting up a server, you'll see tripwire on the list of necessary items every time. It's downright embarrassing that they still don't have a working package. I'm only harping on this becuase I care. If I didn't give a damn, I'd jump to Debian. SuSE has been good to me on every single other issue. I want SuSE to be even better. And putting the 8.2 tripwire package into the 9.0 tree as an update would make my life easier, and I doubt I'm the only sysadmin running 9.0 servers out there...