Bug#366805: tex-common: Group question for tex files: too difficult IMO

[Frank Küster <frank@debian.org>]

Olaf van der Spek <OvdSpek@LIACS.NL> wrote:

> Frank Küster wrote:
>> Olaf van der Spek <OvdSpek@LIACS.NL> wrote:
>>
>>>>> But a 'normal' user doesn't have any idea about what's being asked and
>>>>> what group should be used.
>>>> Does that improve when you read it in the context?
>>> I still think it's too hard for normal users.
>> Could you be more specific?  What is hard, what should be improved?
>> If
>> you don't tell me which ideas are unclear, or which words, or whatever,
>> I can't improve the text.
>
> It's not really about the text, it's about the concepts used (user
> groups, etc).
> Although for Tex users it might be ok.

I don't see how I can ask a question about group ownership without using
the term "group" ;-).  IMHO, either a user is prepared to get such
questions, and to learn if necessary, or they should configure debconf
to only show high priority questions.

>> The real fix would be to implement the whole thing differently, for
>> example with a daemon who does the caching and generates or offers the
>> files on user request.  However, this is complicated, since it would
>> also need to run on Windows.
>
> Windows supports daemons/services too.
> Doesn't the same security issue apply to Windows (and basically any
> other OS) too?

Of course, but writing a daemon that works on very different OSses is
harder than for one only; and Windows is not the hardest one - TeX/web2c
is said to work on systems that don't even have an IP stack (I only have
anecdotal evidence for this, though).

As for security on windows, I doubt that many TeX installations on
windows are set up in a way that tries to prevent users from filling up
the system partition at all:  Here at work, even when logged on as a
domain user with roaming profiles, everybody has their own directory in
C:/Documents\ and\ Settings/ and can fill up the system partition at
will.  And filling up the /var partition is the main concern here - I
doubt that in Tex with its o-so-static data structures there are
relevant undetected buffer overflows or so that could be exploited with
malformed font files.

Regards, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX)