Re: In defense of Suidmanager
On Wed, 27 Nov 1996, Christoph Lameter wrote:
> I think dpkg is the wrong place to put the management of those bits
> because the suidbits should be under the control of the maintainer. The
> application might decide on installation how to install the package and
> thus it would be good if the permissions be under the control of the
> maintainer in the scripts.
>
> Some form of script interface is needed which the envisioned dpkg solution
> would not provide.
>
> Another argument for /etc/suid.conf is the very desirable feature to have
> one file which lists ALL files that could be potential security risks.
>
> The system administrator has it much easier if he can just edit a file to
> set up his local policy regarding these issues.
>
> Having the permissions not in /etc/suid.conf means that the sysadmin needs
> a tool to generate an overview about suid binaries and their status. And
> then the sysadmin has to starts a series of chmods and chowns to set up
> the permissions. Suidmanager makes the task much simpler.
I agree totally with all these arguements. I truely beileve the
linux suidmanager should be a seperate package, independent of dpkg or
deb-make. I do believe that dpkg should invoke the suidmanager when it
detects a suid program automatically. This would make suidmanager a part of
the base. I truely believe that suidmanager should be invisible to both the
users and package maintainers of debian.
I believe dpkg would *not* be the most efficent solution for a
number of reasons:
1) counter intuitive - the dpkg solution goes against the normal
UNIX style of small independent programs that work together. Dpkg as
as it stands is getting too large.
2) to exportable to the the larger community - dpkg despite being
the very best package management solution isn't wide spread and
probably never will be. The suidmanager could become wide spread.
3) flexiblity - the dpkg solution would be less flexible. The
control of the suidbits should be by the package maintainer, system
admin, and by dpkg. Having dpkg do it all isn't reasonable.
Those are just some of my thoughts about it.
---
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---
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