Re: [PROPOSAL] (Ch.16 FHS) be more specific on file/dir permissions
Is it possible to misunderstand my proposal as
"bossing around" Distributions ?
> LSB says nothing about File Permissions.
> o This makes it possible to set up an LSB-conforming package
> and a LSB conforming Linux system where the application can
> not run on the linux system.
I fear that future LSB-compliant distributions could be bashed to dead
if say LSB-compliant oracle can not run on them because of
permission conflicts.
> o LSB-conforming systems should be allowed to use very restrictive
> permission schemes, not to make security and LSB a contradiction.
If we do not spec permissions at all, we will have a de facto standard
which says: All major ISV packages have to run, so give them the permissions
they need. This will force LSB compliant distributions to grant a lot
of file/dir permissions.
The proposal proper gives the Distro/Sysadmin the greatest possible
freedom on the cost of ISVs: If we forbid ISVs to demand certain
permissions the Distro/Admin has the FREEDOM to grant them or not.
> I'm not sure we want to go here. Permissions generally are a system
> administrator issue much more than they are a distribution issue, and
> trying to word things so that we don't prohibit perfectly sane
> configurations might be very difficult. For example, there are probably
> certain system users (like the one used by the imap daemon, or the one
> used by the anonymous FTP daemon) who might have very restrictive
> permissions schemes. Is this allowed? I would argue that an LSB
> statement which prohibited this type of security precaution is broken,
> and we shouldn't go there.
Ted, that is exactly the situation i want to prevent
> My suggest is that we not try to address this "problem". If a
> distribution sets such a highly restrictve set of permissions, the
> system administrator can always "fix" the permissions very easily, and
> if someone did try to sell such a super-secure distribution as a
> desktop, market forces will probably solve the problem very quickly.
Is this good ? Do we want future bad press for Linux and the LSB like:
"Standard Linux is open to XYZ-attack" ?
--
______ ___
/ ___/__/ / Caldera (Deutschland) GmbH
/ /_/ _ / /__ Naegelsbachstr. 49c, 91052 Erlangen, Germany
/_____/_/ /____/ software developer / lsb project
==== /____/ ===== Dipl. Inf. Johannes Poehlmann, mail: jhp@caldera.de
Caldera OpenLinux phone: ++49 9131 7192 336, fax: ++49 9131 7192 399
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