Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 10:57:34 +1030 From: Greg Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org> To: Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.ORG> Cc: Dan Langille <dan@langille.org>, Ruslan Ermilov <ru@FreeBSD.ORG>, Joerg Wunsch <j@uriah.heep.sax.de>, cvs-committers@FreeBSD.ORG, cvs-all@FreeBSD.ORG, arch@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/gnu/usr.bin/man/man Makefile man.c src/etc/mtree BSD.local.dist BSD.usr.dist BSD.x11-4.dist BSD.x11.dist Message-ID: <20020119105733.A50299@wantadilla.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.NEB.3.96L.1020118135552.26166A-100000@fledge.watson.org> References: <20020117053925.A18072-100000@lists.unixathome.org> <Pine.NEB.3.96L.1020118135552.26166A-100000@fledge.watson.org>
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On Friday, 18 January 2002 at 13:58:56 -0500, Robert Watson wrote:
> On Thu, 17 Jan 2002, Dan Langille wrote:
>
>> We've had users coming into IRC channels asking about the man page
>> changes. I don't fully understand the implications yet. From the
>> comments above, it sounds like each time I issue 'man ls', it's going to
>> decompress the man page unless I do some tweaking. Is that correct?
>>
>> If so, that's not good for me, and I suspect for a large number of other
>> people. Else, please ignore the next paragraph.
>
> I don't understand the criticism here. Here are the two cases in the
> current scenario:
>
> (1) catman doesn't exist, so man decompresses the nroff source, processes
> the nroff, spits it into a compressed catman file, and displays it to
> the user (I'm not sure if there's a double decompress here or not).
>
> (2) catman does exist, so man decompresses the processed nroff and
> displays it for the user.
>
> In the new scenario, (1) is eschewed under almost all situations so as to
> avoid using a setuid application. In no situation, new or old, was
> compression ever not performed.
Certainly the compression's not the issue. But the formatting time
could be. It's not as fast as that.
I can think of a couple of compromises:
1. Just don't install /usr/share/man/catman.
2. Use a different user ID or group for catman, and make man(1)
setuid or setgid to that.
>> Please don't force the majority of people to tweak their systems in
>> order to avoid a theoretical problem for a small minority. But if you
>> insist upon doing so, then I feel you must provide a knob in
>> /etc/defaults/make.conf.
>
> Even the people who are objecting to providing no tweak here admit they
> are not in the majority.
Not in this forum. But we're not typical of the user base. I will
continue to use catman, probably making it world writeable, since in
my situation this isn't a compromise. But what about the man in the
street?
Greg
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