Re: Bug#388399: FTBFS problems on alpha, mips[el]: Please help debugging

[Ralf Stubner <ralf.stubner@web.de>]

On Sat, Sep 30, 2006 at 18:12 +0100, Thiemo Seufer wrote:
> Frank Küster wrote:
> > Thiemo Seufer <ths@networkno.de> wrote:
> > >
> > > So, if I understand that correctly, the bug was fixed by running mktexmf
> > > as non-root, and the change of the cache location is only a collateral.
> > 
> > No, or I do not understand what you mean.
> 
> I meant the the earlier security bug you mentioned. To me, the solution
> for the earlier bug as well as the current one looks like keeping the
> font cache in /var but maintaining it via a mktexmf user.

The problem is that mktexmf is a shell script (=no suid possible) that
is started with the rights of the user. So the former solution required
all users that wanted to use TeX to have write access below
/var/cache/fonts. In addition for buildds the default now-questions-
asked installation had to have directories below /var/cache/fonts with
world write access. We had a system to restrict these rights to some
group, but the debconf question and code were quite complicated and
confused many users.

cheerio
ralf