rtools were deemed almost unused 15 years ago...

[Warner Losh]

On Tue, Jun 20, 2017 at 2:25 PM, Michael Gmelin <freebsd at grem.de> wrote:

>
>
> > On 20. Jun 2017, at 22:16, Slawa Olhovchenkov <slw at zxy.spb.ru> wrote:
> >
> >> On Tue, Jun 20, 2017 at 08:22:17PM +0200, Emmanuel Vadot wrote:
> >>
> >> 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.
> >
> > Don't talk what we need to learn, please.
> >
> > PS: nc don't emulate telnet protocol.
>
> I use nc every day (more frequently than telnet for sure), but it serves a
> different purpose than telnet. I need both.
>

Same here. I use cat and more every day as well. They both display files,
but have different uses...

Warner