docs/166553: find(1): find -delete documentation is misleading

[Jim Riggs]

The following reply was made to PR docs/166553; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Jim Riggs <ports at christianserving.org>
To: bug-followup at FreeBSD.org,
 rjk at greenend.org.uk
Cc:  
Subject: Re: docs/166553: find(1): find -delete documentation is misleading
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:57:37 -0500

 I'm not sure that I would classify this as a documentation bug. It seems =
 to be a code bug unless the documentation is just completely unclear as =
 to how this is to behave. It seems that the intent is that you can't use =
 -delete with ./ or ../ in the path; however, it completely blocks =
 anything with / anywhere in the path. For example, this will fail (see =
 bin/48271):
 
 # cd /
 # mkdir testdir
 # mkdir testdir/testdir2
 # find /testdir -delete
 find: -delete: /testdir: relative path potentially not safe
 
 Now, what is "relative" in the path '/testdir'? So, the question is, =
 what is the code trying to stop? Is there a security issue with an =
 _absolute_ path, a _relative_ path, or both? Right now, it is blocking =
 both. Is -delete only supposed to be used in cwd (i.e. '.')? If so, why =
 the restriction? I am just trying to understand what is "potentially not =
 safe."
 
 This issue is also hosing my `make release' on 9.0-RELEASE with =
 WITHOUT_GAMES defined in src.conf:
 
 ...
 
 install -o root -g wheel -m 444  =
 /usr/src/etc/../sys/amd64/conf/GENERIC.hints  =
 /usr/obj/release/dist/base/boot/device.hints
 find //usr/obj/release/dist/doc -empty -delete
 find //usr/obj/release/dist/games -empty -delete
 find: -delete: //usr/obj/release/dist/games: relative path potentially =
 not safe
 *** Error code 1
 
 Stop in /usr/src.
 *** Error code 1
 
 Stop in /usr/src.
 *** Error code 1
 
 Stop in /usr/src/release.
 *** Error code 1
 
 Stop in /usr/src/release.