Why most run Microsoft, not RedHat

[Les Mikesell]

Zoltan Boszormenyi wrote:
>>
>> It's all a matter of programmer-vs.-programmer wars to show who is in
>> control.
> 
> My questions above weren't about war. Again, different POVs.
> I tried to give some examples of ease of use vs manual control.

It's about *who* is in control.  The *how* is a matter of programming. 
Is it your machine or the package manager's?  What happens when the 
package manager is compromised?

> A1. you have package manager because you want easy installation
>       and you don't want to wait while the stuff compiles

And after this is in place you add something that theoretically
only you are supposed to be able to control.

> A3.  because it's easier to have everything have the proper permissions,
>      let rpm handle it.
> 
> and
> 
> A2. the packager may consider a file to be so essential that he wants it
>    immutable. but the upgrade of the package must also work without
>    manual override, i.e. without clearing immutable flag first.

Ahh, but then that thing you just added to give yourself an extra layer 
of control doesn't work any more.

>>   You can compare it to the person who thought that the passwd program 
>> should only talk directly to a tty and that programs should not be 
>> able to use it.  That lasted a few months - until another programmer 
>> wanted his program to be able to change passwords and wrote 'expect' 
>> to do it.  A big waste of both people's time...
> 
> Agreed, that's unfortunate.
> 
>>> But your POV in the question above is wrong.
>>> The point is to take advantage of something
>>> where available.
>>
>> Beg your pardon?  The point of adding the immutable bit was so the 
>> file couldn't be changed by ordinary means. It is, again, a waste of 
>> both parties efforts as soon as someone adds the programming to bypass 
>> its attempt at control.
> 
> But you already have it - you can use chattr from shell scripts or 
> manually.
> But chattr works only as root and you can only run rpm -[iU] as root
> successfully anyway.
> Hm. You can use chattr in pre and post scriptlets in rpm today. :-)
> But rpmv won't tell you whether the fs-special flags were set
> by rpm or by someone else.

Yes, just like the passwd/expect example.  If there is a possible way to 
circumvent your special-exception case, there wasn't much sense it 
adding it in the first place - it just makes everything harder without 
serving its original purpose.

> I can certainly remember if I set this flag myself (e.g. have it 
> documented)
> or ask the collegues. If no one authorized has set it (like it was in 
> the case of
> the intrusion) then I would expect that rpm were able to replace
> a package with --force, even if some files have the immutable flag set.
> (Or similar in case of other FSes than ext2/3/4.)

Back to the programmer-vs.-programmer.  If rpm does this, the rootkits 
will just supply a modified rpm program that only pretends to do it but 
doesn't really replace the trojan files.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com