Re: SGID man

From: Isaac To (kktoat_private)
Date: Tue Aug 03 1999 - 00:30:46 PDT

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    >>>>> "Solar" == Solar Designer <solarat_private> writes:
    
        Solar> I wouldn't normally post this, but while we're on the topic...
        Solar> There's an ancient problem with SGID man that I keep seeing on
        Solar> various systems.  For example, on Red Hat 5.2:
    
    This seems to be a very general problem for programs that want to cache
    things but don't want to acquire a new userid.  TeX (i.e. MetaFont) comes
    close, I think.
    
        Solar> Solutions?  We could change the permissions on those directories
        Solar> from 775 or 1777 (that's what I've seen on various systems) to
        Solar> 770, so that group man is always required.  However, doing so
        Solar> would break things, as the group is (and should be) dropped for
        Solar> many operations.  Some changes to the way man works would be
        Solar> required to support such restricted permissions.
    
    It seems to be a strange solution to me.  I am disallowed to read a
    directory since I own files in it.  Owning such files is
    horrible anyway, especially when quota is enabled.
    
        Solar> A workaround could be to preformat all the man pages as root.
        Solar> Finally, we could move to a SUID man, making the binary immutable
        Solar> (non-portable, not backup friendly).  I don't like any of these.
    
    If your policy is to make every SUID program immutable, being non-portable
    is not a problem (whenever you restore a backup, you just make sure every
    SUID program becomes immutable before restarting service).  Otherwise, it is
    not absolutely necessary for the binary to be immutable.
    
    But yes, it is ugly.  It might be better if any SGID program is also SUID
    nobody, and re-acquire real user privilege only when required.  But still,
    it is ugly.
    
        Solar> In my opinion, it is time to stop storing preformatted pages.  It
        Solar> is no longer worth the risk.  CPUs got faster, man pages are the
        Solar> same.
    
    But stop storing preprocessed fonts is not an option at all.  My Chinese
    fonts needs hours to get completely processed, and even a regular Chinese
    LaTeX source require half an hour.  Preprocessing all fonts in advance is
    feasible only to those who want to spare 1G for that purpose.
    
    Isaac.
    
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