Re: [tbox-l] bug in hostname / coreutils-5.0-2

[Rainer T. <ta...@ta...>]

Hello,

Brian Likosar wrote:
> --- Rainer Tammer <ta...@ta...> wrote:
>
>   
>> Hello,
>>
>> hdkutz wrote:
>>     
>>> The commands differ! Check the man page and info
>>>       
>> of /opt/freeware/bin/hostname.
>>     
>>>   
>>>       
>> I know. This is not the problem.
>>     
>
> Two things I do as a "best practice":
> 1.  Don't compile code as root, only run the "make
> install" step as root.  A non-root user should not be
> able to run "hostname -s" to successfully rename the
> host.
>   
Yes, thats right. This is the cause why it took us over 10 years to find
out that we had
a bug in our .profile/.env (call to hostname -s without a full path to
hostname)....

> 2.  On AIX, when performing compiles, change your path
> so that "/usr/linux/bin" is at the beginning of your
> path, so that all GNU utilities find what they expect.
>
>   
I can only agree partially with this.
I always try to build the packages with the native OS tools.

The thing which concerns me the most is that if the root user executes a
script with a call to hostname -s with the wrong path it might be possible
to "destroy" the hostname.

The GNU hostname should reject all hostnames starting or ending with an "-"
because this hostname would be illegal (according to the standard RFCs).


> Brian
>
>
>   
Bye
  Rainer
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>
>