Re: weekly locate error Was: September 2024 stabilization week

On 10/1/24 11:29, Rodney W. Grimes wrote:
>> On 9/30/24 19:36, Jamie Landeg-Jones wrote:
>>> Kyle Evans <kevans@FreeBSD.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> It might be that the better long-term approach is to teach updatedb.sh
>>>> how to drop privileges and push that out of the periodic script to avoid
>>>> surprises like this from the different execution environments.  This
>>>> /feels/ like the kind of thing we could take an opinionated stance on,
>>>> maybe providing an escape hatch of some sort if someone really wants to
>>>> complain that they can't document all filenames on the system.
>>>
>>> This is how it already works. It calls locate.updatedb as "nobody", so
>>> only files readable by "nobody" are indexed:
>>>
>>>       echo /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb | nice -n 5 su -fm nobody || rc=3
>>
>> Yes, my proposal is that it stops doing that and we teach updatedb to
>> handle the priv-dropping instead, so that you get the same behavior no
>> matter how you execute it.
> 
> If you do this please make it possible to run it WITHOUT dropping
> privledge, some of actually run locate.updatedb with full access
> to file systems to produce more complete locate databases where
> this information is not considered private.
> 
>> Thanks,
>> Kyle Evans

This is the problem I have with mailing lists; 2/3 responses didn't go 
back and read the critical bit of context to my stance (but at least you 
still included it in your quote, the other one trimmed it entirely):

 > [...] surprises like this from the different execution environments.
 > This /feels/ like the kind of thing we could take an opinionated
 > stance on, maybe providing an escape hatch of some sort if someone
 > really wants to complain that they can't document all filenames on
 > the system.

I don't disagree that there are probably valid cases, this is a proposal 
of a possible change, not a change itself.  Admittedly I didn't see it 
as likely as it apparently is, but it's not like I completely ignored 
the possibility.

Thanks,

Kyle Evans