Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2005 12:24:39 -0500
From: "Burton Strauss" <Burton@...llNetSolutions.com>
To: "'Tim Nelson'" <tim.nelson@...alive.biz>,
	"'John Richard Moser'" <nigelenki@...cast.net>
Cc: "'Klaus Schwenk'" <zooloo_0@....de>, <bugtraq@...urityfocus.com>
Subject: RE: Installation of software, and security. . .


I think you are wrong.  Suppose you do create that (mythical) complete set
of actions inside the package manager.

You can't add security - by definition if you run an rpm-type install you
are root, so there's nothing new.

You can't use something like SELinux unless you split the package in two (a
god-equivalent version to add the permissions for the install to the SElinux
databases and then a non-root install using those permissions).  So instead
of hacking into the install, just hack into the god-equiv part).

All you've done for yourself is to create another (mini) 'language' the
packager has to learn, instead of using good ole
(insert-name-of-shell-here).  

Where there could be gains are in a small number of those 'hard to do right'
actions, which are usually erroneously scripted.  But as it is, many RPMs
(and I'm guilty here), don't use what IS available.  So adding more things
won't really help that much either.

Fixing package scripts to take advantage of your new, wonderful actions
would be a massive task, across 1000s of packages (and egos) to fix.

So if there's nothing gained, well, why bother?

However, there is somewhere you can affect things - and that is within rpm
itself.  How: enable/force better logging of the actions performed during a
script.  Down to the line-of-a-script level if you want.  That would be
effective/useful, even if nobody ever fixed up a script.



-----Burton
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Tim Nelson [mailto:tim.nelson@...alive.biz] 
Sent: Monday, July 18, 2005 11:01 PM
To: John Richard Moser
Cc: Klaus Schwenk; 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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