rtools were deemed almost unused 15 years ago...

[Emmanuel Vadot]

On Tue, 20 Jun 2017 19:17:44 +0200
Joel Dahl <joel at vnode.se> wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 20, 2017 at 03:59:54PM +0200, Michael Gmelin wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > On Tue, 20 Jun 2017 13:11:37 +0200
> > Baptiste Daroussin <bapt at FreeBSD.org> wrote:
> > 
> > > On Tue, Jun 20, 2017 at 12:25:46PM +0200, Jeremie Le Hen wrote:
> > > > Hey folks,
> > > > 
> > > > I remember when I was still barely out of my teenagehood, people
> > > > were mostly using ssh/scp while rtools (rsh, rlogin, ... for the
> > > > youngsters) were left in place as a courtesy for legacy production
> > > > systems still relying it on them.
> > > > 
> > > > Fast forward to 2017 (so yes, 15 years later), stack-clash [1]
> > > > sorely reminds us that suid binaries are an attack surface. I don't
> > > > even need to mention that it's a healthy engineering practice to
> > > > remove unused code, both from a maintenance and security
> > > > perspective.
> > > > 
> > > > Therefore, I hereby propose to remove rtools from the base system.
> > > > I acknowledge this will likely cause troubles for a handful of
> > > > people who are still relying on it for good or bad reasons. But the
> > > > flipside is that the attack surface of millions of FreeBSD
> > > > installed out there will be reduced.
> > > > 
> > > > The proposed roadmap is:
> > > > - disable from the build on head and let it soak for one month
> > > > - remove rtools from the base.
> > > > 
> > > > What do you guys think?  Any preferred color for the bikeshed? :)
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > [1] https://www.qualys.com/2017/06/19/stack-clash/stack-clash.txt  
> > > 
> > > Yeah!
> > > 
> > > Is telnetd part of your list?
> > 
> > As long as the telnet(1) client stays in I'm all for it.
> 
> +1. Please keep the telnet client. It's something I expect be part of the base
> system utilities. I use it all the time.
> 
> -- 
> Joel

 Time to learn nc(1), I'm still fighting to use nc(1) insteal of telnet
(1) because of musle memory but removing it will help me make the
switch.

 I honestly don't see any valid reason to keep telnet in the tree.

-- 
Emmanuel Vadot <manu at bidouilliste.com> <manu at freebsd.org>