linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 11/11] xz: Adjust arch-specific options for better kernel compression

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Message-ID: <20240403225903.0773746d@kaneli>
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2024 22:59:03 +0300
From: Lasse Collin <lasse.collin@...aani.org>
To: <angel.lkml@...its.net>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>, Jubin Zhong
 <zhongjubin@...wei.com>, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
 vegard.nossum@...cle.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH 11/11] xz: Adjust arch-specific options for better
 kernel compression

On 2024-03-31 angel.lkml@...its.net wrote:
> Under the light of the recent xz backdoor, I should note that this
> patch (patch 11) does:
> 
> > +# Set XZ_VERSION (and LIBLZMA_VERSION). This is needed to disable
> > features +# that aren't available in old XZ Utils versions.
> > +eval "$($XZ --robot --version)" || exit

The eval method has been on the xz man page for a very long time but I
agree that due to the recent events the above method is not ideal.

It can break also if XZ_OPT or XZ_DEFAULTS contains something that they
usually shouldn't. For example, XZ_OPT=--help would make the above eval
method run the output of $XZ --help.

> So, in the spirit of keeping a fair amount of paranoia, and since it
> doesn't do any harm, any such code should be failproofed to ensure it
> can only import the expected shell variables with the right format[3]:
>
>  eval "$($XZ --robot --version | grep '^\(XZ\|LIBLZMA\)_VERSION=[0-9]*$')" || exit

I would rather get rid of eval. I committed the following to the
upstream repository:

XZ_VERSION=$($XZ --robot --version | sed -n 's/^XZ_VERSION=//p') || exit

Thanks!

-- 
Lasse Collin