Bug#774227: busybox-static: execs applets when chrooting
On Mon, 2018-02-05 at 12:17 +0100, Chris Boot wrote:
> Control: tags -1 -confirmed -patch +wontfix
> Control: retitle -1 busybox-static: always prefers applets when chrooting
>
> This is desired behaviour for the busybox-static package, and I can't
> think of any documentation changes that could make this clearer.
>
> For the benefit of others who may stumble across this bug:
>
> The standard and preferred package for use on a standard Debian system
> is 'busybox'. 'busybox-static' will also work just as well inside the
> initramfs, but is designed to be used as a rescue tool if fundamental
> components of your system, such as your C library, as broken.
>
> To facilitate this busybox-static always prefers to run its own applets,
> including dpkg, rather than the system-supplied binaries; if your system
> is sufficiently broken that you are running busybox ash, it's a safe
> assumption that your system tools are also hosed.
(I'm not affected by this so just a drive-by comment).
For most applets this seems like sound logic, but for the `chroot`
applet specifically the likely purpose would seem to be to switch into
a new, non-broken, root and execute commands there. Switching into the
chroot and then reexecuting the busybox from the host instead of the
command from within that chroot seems rather counter-intuitive to me.
The patch given only seem to affect the command executed post-chroot
and not any other internal execing (including not the execution of
`chroot` itself).
Ian.
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