Re: RH and GNOME
On 25 Jul 1998 02:12:03 -0500 , Rob Browning wrote:
>"Petra, Kevin J Poorman" <ewigin@SoftHome.net> writes:
>
>> dpkg should be made to call alien on a rh package automaticly
>> ... ie: dpkg -i some_package.rpm would trigger alein, and then
>> dpkg... so that it's automatic, and easy for newbies, and non-power
>> users, to install rh packages.
>
>All other issues aside, I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I
>think this is an extremely poor idea. Who's going to take
>responsiblilty for *big* flame festival as soon as some user tries
>
> dpkg -i sysvinit*.rpm
>
>because they heard there was a security fix that they needed that was
>already available in the RedHat package?
As others have already suggested, default to not letting the user replace
an essential package.
An idea I had at this point is to add a new field to the package control
data, saying what type of program it is and, from that, what security
implications there are.
I'm thinking of a field that describes the package as one or more of:
bootup: Required for a _very_ basic boot up (i.e. bash, sysvinit and libc6)
daemon: A daemon that runs on a privileged port as root (e.g. apache,
sshd, cfingerd)
lib: A library (e.g. libjpeg)
sysutil: A "standard" UNIX utility or replacement for one (e.g. grep, mawk,
gawk, gcc)
app: An application or program that would not be run as root unless
root chose to explicitly use it (e.g. joe, emacs, netscape, pine)
suid-app: Any package that would be described as app, but has setuid
executables in it. (e.g. dosemu)
requires-setup: Any package whose postinst script does not run fully
automatically (ignoring failure due to some error)
(Possibly:)
suid-lib: A library used by setuid programs (e.g. svgalib)
sgid-app: Any package that would be described as app, but has setgid
executables in it. (e.g. maelstrom)
source: A package that will build debian packages (e.g. pine-src,
pine-diff, kernel-package)
The idea being that installing an app, sgid-app or lib would not require
too much of a security consideration by sysadmins; if they didn't install
it, a luser could achieve pretty much the same by installing it in their
home directory or /tmp, but with more hassle. Lintian could automatically
check how valid an app or lib description is.
Sysadmins could supply a mechanism for (a subset of) their users to install
app's or lib's which weren't tagged as suid, sgid or requires-setup
automatically, with a notification going to the sysadmin.
It also makes the sysadmin think when they install new packages (there are
quite a few packages which do not obviously contain setuid/setgid programs
(e.g. screen, splitvt); I'd like to have something notify me that the
package contained setuid programs/ programs that would be run as root (e.g.
/etc/cron*.d/* and /etc/init.d/* scripts))
Maybe this is all a bit much, but I think the suid flag at least is quite
useful...
-- Christopher Reed, Selwyn College, Cambridge --
E-Mail: cr212@cam.ac.uk WWW: http://dura.sel.cam.ac.uk/ [~cr212/]
r2 T1 cSEL dCS hEn/Chi A4 S+ C*$+++L/UdP W+++ y# a VTsj (Cantab) 1.0
kill -9 $$
-- Christopher Reed, Selwyn College, Cambridge --
E-Mail: cr212@cam.ac.uk WWW: http://dura.sel.cam.ac.uk/ [~cr212/]
r2 T1 cSEL dCS hEn/Chi A4 S+ C*$+++L/UdP W+++ y# a VTsj (Cantab) 1.0
Sie sind so subtil wie ein Kamel mit seinem Hump auf Feuer.
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