Zone alarm, you have failed me for the first time... and the last. (BLODA news)

[Dave Korn <dave dot korn dot cygwin at googlemail dot com>]

  So, I went to reboot my machine the other day, for the first time in about a
month, and what should happen when it came back up but ZA (free, v6 from a few
years back) refusing to start, with an error message about not being able to
validate a couple of its DLLs and I'm probably missing a root cert.

  Actually, what it turned out to be was that one of Verisign's intermediate
certs ("Verisign Class 3 Code Signing 2004 CA", one level beneath VeriSign's
root and the issuer of Checkpoint's cert used to sign the files) had expired
since I last rebooted (on 16/07/09) and so the chain was invalid.  Had to set
the system clock back in order to get it running long enough to go online,
download a few replacement PFWs and uninstall it.  Newer versions of ZA don't
run on w2k and I'm sure not updating my entire OS just because someone else's
cert expired ...  Also, should I be able to undermine the whole of PKI just by
winding the clock back on my PC?  Expired should mean expired revoked deleted
and not available again even if you try IMO ...

  Anyway, the upshot of all this is that I've had the opportunity to check a
couple of BLODAs, and I can report:

 - (Agnitum) Outpost (Free) still screwy.  Left a gfortran testsuite running
overnight and when I came back to it, ...

> WARNING: gfortran.dg/direct_io_8.f90 compilation failed to produce executable
>       2 [main] expect 1272 tty_list::allocate: No tty allocated
> FAIL: gfortran.dg/direct_io_8.f90 (test for excess errors)
> WARNING: gfortran.dg/direct_io_8.f90 compilation failed to produce executable
>   13856 [main] expect 1272 tty_list::allocate: No tty allocated
> FAIL: gfortran.dg/direct_io_8.f90 (test for excess errors)
> WARNING: gfortran.dg/direct_io_8.f90 compilation failed to produce executable
>   27105 [main] expect 1272 tty_list::allocate: No tty allocated
> FAIL: gfortran.dg/direct_io_8.f90 (test for excess errors)
> WARNING: gfortran.dg/direct_io_8.f90 compilation failed to produce executable
>   39921 [main] expect 1272 tty_list::allocate: No tty allocated
> FAIL: gfortran.dg/direct_io_8.f90 (test for excess errors)

  .... snip many thousands of similar ....

> Running /gnu/gcc/releases/4.3.3-1/gcc4-4.3.3-1/src/gcc-4.3.3/gcc/testsuite/gfortran.dg/gomp/gomp.exp ...
> couldn't create output pipe for command: permission denied
>     while executing
> "exec $compiler --print-multi-lib"
>     (procedure "gcc-set-multilib-library-path" line 14)
>     invoked from within
> "gcc-set-multilib-library-path $GFORTRAN_UNDER_TEST"
>     (procedure "gfortran_link_flags" line 33)
>     invoked from within
> "gfortran_link_flags [get_multilibs] "
>     invoked from within

 [ ... etc ... ]

  Not just that but T'bird had hung so hard it couldn't respond or redraw its
window or exit, and ping and tracert died with abnormal hardware error codes
while the firewall requester was still asking me if I wanted to let them
through.  I had all the advanced features (behavioural blocking, component
control) switched off, so I figure that's leaking handles somewhere in the
core engine.

 - Sunbelt (formerly Kerio):  Running with it now.  Gfortran testsuite now way
beyond the point that Outpost failed at and showing no abnormalities, open
object and handles lists all looking reasonable in Process Explorer, it's
starting to look like it might just be Cygwin-friendly.  (All advanced
features turned off, no behavioural / NIDS / HIPS / etc.)

  So the score so far, Sunbelt one, Outpost nought, ZA minus about a million.
 Here's crossing all my fingers and thumbs and hoping I'm not about to get a
zillion mysterious fork errors cropping up ...

    cheers,
      DaveK