[gambit-list] [PATCH] Fix .gambc_history permissions
Christian Jaeger
christian at pflanze.mine.nu
Wed Oct 15 03:39:18 EDT 2008
Bradley Lucier wrote:
> Wouldn't it be better to create it with the current UMASK?
That was the previous behaviour, i.e. permissions: #o666.
Usually you're using an umask that allows read permission to other
users, i.e. is used to describe how permissive writing to your files is.
There's no separate umask for sensitive files. Programs wishing to make
files private need to do so explicitely (examples that do so include
bash, mysql, psql, rlwrap).
The "perlfunc" manpage says about umask:
«Here's some advice: supply a creation mode of 0666 for
regular files (in
"sysopen") and one of 0777 for directories (in "mkdir")
and executable files.
This gives users the freedom of choice: if they want
protected files, they might
choose process umasks of 022, 027, or even the
particularly antisocial mask of
077. Programs should rarely if ever make policy
decisions better left to the
user. The exception to this is when writing files that
should be kept private:
mail files, web browser cookies, .rhosts files, and so on.»
(The libc manual says:
«Programs that create files typically specify a mode argument that
includes all the permissions that make sense for the particular file.
For an ordinary file, this is typically read and write permission for
all classes of users. These permissions are then restricted as specified
by the individual user's own file creation mask. »
Since history files could contain sensitive information, a permissive
file mode like for normal files doesn't "make sense".)
Note that you could always "chmod" the file's permissions after it's
creation to make it more accessible, Gambit won't change the permissions
of the file once it exists. This is also a bit of a caveat to normal
users: the given patch doesn't make your already existing history files
(from previous Gambit versions) private, you need to make those private
manually (or delete them).
Christian.
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