bugtraq - Re: Installation of software, and security. . .

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Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.60.0507191323450.3530@tnelson.webalive.biz>
Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2005 14:01:01 +1000 (EST)
From: Tim Nelson <tim.nelson@...alive.biz>
To: John Richard Moser <nigelenki@...cast.net>
Cc: Klaus Schwenk <zooloo_0@....de>, bugtraq@...urityfocus.com
Subject: Re: Installation of software, and security. . .

On Sun, 17 Jul 2005, John Richard Moser wrote:

>> like a complete mess. Far too many programs wouldn't need an installation in the
>> first place. And it's hard to give end users a rule of thumb on how to handle
>> installation programs when there is no real agreement on what installers should
>> (not) do. At least from my POV.
>>
>
> Yes, you hit the nail on the head with a jackhammer.  One discussion on
> autopackage was that the devs don't want to limit the API and thus want
> the prepare, install, and uninstall to be a bash script supplied by the
> package "so it can do anything."  I hate this logic.  Why does it need
> to be able to do "anything"?

 	I think you're both right :).  I agree that packages need to be 
able to do anything, but it'd be nice if we could try to eliminate the pre 
and post install scripts.

 	One thing that would be useful is if someone could look at the 
things that are typically done in pre/post install scripts, and then 
integrate those into the package manager.  We have a set of custom RPMs 
here, and they do a variety of things in the pre and post install scripts, 
but the main ones are:
-	Reconfigure other software; apache never needs this, because it
 	uses the conf.d directory, but the tomcat we use doesn't seem to
 	work this way, and it should
-	Service reloads; after we add a file which does the apache config,
 	we need to reload apache; if RPM supported us going
 	"%reload apache", then we wouldn't need the post-install script
 	for that

 	My suggested solution would be to:
1.	Build in to RPM (or whatever) any relatively harmless features
 	which are regularly used (eg. reload)
2.	Issue a security warning and quit for any packages that have
 	pre/post install scripts, and any actions that might cause trouble
 	(eg. reload)
3.	Set --with-scripts (or something) to enable running scripts, and
 	--with-actions to enable potentially troublesome actions (eg.
 	reload), or --without-actions to just install files and not do the
 	actions.

 	?

 	:)

-- 
Kind Regards,

Tim Nelson
Server Administrator

P: 03 9934 0888
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