monitoring.yml

important

A monitoring.yml file is strongly suggested, but not yet required for Solus packages.

A monitoring.yml file is included in the Packages repository directory for every Solus package to enable automatic scanning for new releases and security advisories.

Checking for new releases is done by mapping the Solus package to an Anitya ID. Anitya is a Red Hat project, part of release-monitoring.org

Checking for security advisories (CVEs), is done by mapping the Solus package to a Common Platform Enumeration Name (CPE) from the National Vulnerability Database.

Adding monitoring.yml to an existing package

To add a monitoring.yml file to an existing package you can use the following go-task command to add a template file, starting from within the directory containing the package.yml for a given package:

go-task add-monitoring

Which will create a file with the following contents:

# Remove all comments before submitting, except CPE check date if none found
releases:
  id: ~ # Check https://release-monitoring.org/
  rss: ~ # For example https://github.com/PyO3/maturin/releases.atom
# No known CPE, checked 2024-04-24
security:
  cpe: ~

You must, at minimum, fill out id and check if the package has an RSS feed and CPE name. If you can find no data for either of these fields, it must be set to ~.

systemd as an example

Let's look at the monitoring.yml file for systemd as an example.

The systemd directory in the Packages repository looks like this:

systemd
├── monitoring.yml
├── package.yml
├── pspec_x86_64.xml
└── *lots of other files we can ignore*

The monitoring.yml looks like this:

releases:
  id: 205088
  ignore:
    # We only update to the n-1 stable release. So for now we're only interested in 252.x updates
    - "253.*"
  rss: https://github.com/systemd/systemd-stable/tags.atom
security:
  cpe:
    - vendor: systemd_project
      product: systemd
    - vendor: freedesktop
      product: systemd
  ignore:
    # A non-existent CVE added here as an example
    - CVE-2022-55555

"releases" fields

Fields used to monitor for new versions.

Field	Type	Required ?	Description
id	integer	Yes	Anitya ID from release-monitoring.org
ignore	list of regular expressions	No	List of regular expressions enclosed in quotes matching versions to ignore. Include a comment explaining the ignored versions.
rss	URL	Yes	URL for a releases RSS feed. If the only RSS feed you can find for a project is a general "news" feed, set it to ~. For GitHub projects, you can use the "tags" or "releases" feed: https://github.com/USER/REPOSITORY/tagsORreleases.atom

Finding the Anitya ID

To find the Anitya ID, search release-monitoring.org by project name, then take the ID out of the URL for the correct search result.

For example, the correct systemd search result for us is systemd-stable with the URL https://release-monitoring.org/project/205088/, so we use 205088 in the id field

If a project is not tracked by release-monitoring.org, you can create an account and add it.

"security" fields

Fields used to monitor for security advisories (CVEs)

Field	Type	Required ?	Description
cpe	list	Yes	List of vendor:product pairs from a full CPE name. CVEs for a given project may be published under more than one CPE; include more than one if that is likely.
ignore	list of strings	No	List of specific CVE identifiers which can be ignored, including a comment explaining why each CVE was ignored. As an example, a CVE can be ignored if the Solus package includes a patch fixing the CVE.

What is a CPE Name?

A CPE Name is a structured naming scheme for information technology systems, primarily used to search for CVEs.

CPE names contain redundant information we can ignore, we are only interested in the vendor and the product.

For example, cpe:2.3:a:systemd_project:systemd is the CPE for the vendor systemd_project, and the product systemd.

Finding the CPE Name

The easiest way to search for CPE Names is with the following command; replacing systemd with your search term:

curl -s -X POST https://cpe-guesser.cve-search.org/search -d "{\"query\": [\"systemd\"]}" | jq .

Note this command uses the jq tool, which you may not have installed:

sudo eopkg it jq

If you have our helper functions installed, you can use the following command:

cpesearch systemd

tip

Convert your search term to lower case and try variations on the search term if you get no results. The CPE search is not a "fuzzy" search.

The command returns the following:

[
  [
    49192,
    "cpe:2.3:a:ubuntu_developers:systemd"
  ],
  [
    116392,
    "cpe:2.3:a:lennart_poettering:systemd"
  ],
  [
    120506,
    "cpe:2.3:a:freedesktop:systemd"
  ],
  [
    120627,
    "cpe:2.3:a:systemd_project:systemd"
  ]
]

Ignore the numerical ids, let's walk through the CPEs by vendor:

• ubuntu_developers is for systemd patched by Ubuntu; we can ignore it
• lennart_poettering is for the main systemd developer and is probably a bleeding edge vendor; ignore it
• freedesktop is from freedesktop.org and is a good candidate, so we add it
• systemd_project is a good candidate, so we add it

No known CPE

If an established product hasn't had a security advisory in the past, it might not have a CPE.

In that case, include an empty security and cpe field with a comment in the following format:

# No known CPE, checked 2024-01-23
security:
  cpe: ~

tip

If you are unsure of what to do in this case, feel free to ask in the Solus Packaging Matrix room.