Re: Can texconfig wipeout a harddisk?
"RS" == Ryan Scott <scott@leorg.ucdavis.edu> writes:
Ryan,
RS> I am not sure who this should be going to, but I thought I
RS> would start with this list. If you know who the appropriate
RS> person to forward this to is, please do so with me as a
RS> cc:.
The appropriate place would probably be the teTeX maintainers.
debian-tetex-maint is for problems with the teTeX packages for the
Debian GNU/Linux system.
To subscribe to the teTeX discussion list, send a message with the
body ``subscribe tetex'' to <majordomo@informatik.uni-hannover.de>.
There's also a searchable Web archive at
<http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/tetex/>. (I wasn't able
to find anything similar to your problem in the archive.)
RS> I am trying to find out if it is possible for the texconfig
RS> program within teTeX 1.0.6 to wipe out a hard disk. Right
RS> now it is my leading suspect for a system wipe I am
RS> recovering from. Here are the details:
texconfig is a Bourne shell script written by Thomas Esser of the
teTeX project.
The only place an `rm -rf'' appears is in a trap command, where it
is used to remove a temporary directory if texconfig is
interrupted (e.g., by hitting Control-C). The temporary directory
is defined as $TMPDIR (or /tmp if $TMPDIR hasn't been defined),
plus /texconf, plus the process number. Even if you had set
TMPDIR set to /, the script would still only delete the
/texconf<somenumber> directory, not the whole disk.
When started, texconfig looks around to find the location of
various binaries and configuration files. It then attempts to run
the dialog program to provide a menu-based interface. If dialog
fails to start, you would have to run texconfig in batch mode (by
providing various arguments to tell the script what you wanted
done). texconfig shouldn't rebuild the ls-R databases unless you
select the REHASH option from the menu or ``texconfig rehash'' on
the command line. (You said you ran texconfig from the command
line, as root, but didn't specify any arguments you may have
supplied.)
I don't see any way that you could have modified your texmf.cnf
file such that texconfig would wipe your hard disks -- as I said,
the only place there's an ``rm -r'' is in code dealing with the
temporary directory that texconfig creates for itself.
You didn't mention where your machine is located, but given that
you were away for thirty minutes, you may also want to consider
the possibility that someone may have wandered by, noticed your
machine was running texconfig, realized you were probably logged
in as root, and took advantage of that by quitting texconfig and
typing ``cd / ; rm -rf *''. Or perhaps your machine was cracked
and the cracker just happened to decide to wipe your disk while
you were running texconfig (or modified texconfig to wipe your
disk)?
You might also try to replicate what happened, by reinstalling
your OS, then teTeX, then making the changes you made to your
teTeX configuration and running texconfig again. If you could
replicate the problem, it would be much easier to find and fix.
Finally, you should probably ask on the main teTeX list in case
anyone there might have other ideas. Whatever happened, I'm
sympathetic -- I'm well aware of how much work it takes to get a
system working the way you want it and then having to reinstall it
from scratch.
Good luck,
CMC
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Behind the counter a boy with a shaven head stared vacantly into space,
a dozen spikes of microsoft protruding from the socket behind his ear.
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C.M. Connelly c@eskimo.com SHC, DS
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