On Mon, Aug 01, 2005 at 11:37:05PM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Howdy hackers, > > I'm sorry for the previous patch, so here is at least one item that really > bugs me that isn't obfuscation. In short, I don't see any reason to fork > some process to simply "touch" a file (is a filesystem writable) when > built-in shell i/o does this: > > --- /etc/rc.d/tmp.orig Mon Aug 1 23:20:24 2005 > +++ /etc/rc.d/tmp Mon Aug 1 23:22:07 2005 > @@ -48,8 +48,8 @@ > [Nn][Oo]) > ;; > *) > - if (/bin/mkdir -p /tmp/.diskless 2> /dev/null); then > - rmdir /tmp/.diskless > + if ( > /tmp/.diskless 2> /dev/null); then > + rm /tmp/.diskless > else > if [ -h /tmp ]; then > echo "*** /tmp is a symlink to a non-writable area!" >
The thing you suggest is bloody insecure. Just imagine some baduser doing ln -s /etc/passwd /tmp/.diskless before rc.d/tmp gets executed. I guess this is the reason why directory creation is used instead of file creation. I just wonder why a new shell is forked for this test. Simply if /bin/mkdir -p /tmp/.diskless 2> /dev/null ; then would do the same thing without forking a new shell that only executes /bin/mkdir Even we can use if [ -d /tmp -a -w /tmp ] ; then or (which is equivalent) if [ -d /tmp ] && [ -w /tmp ] ; then and save external commands (mkdir) execution and directory creation/deletion at all.
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