[coLinux-devel] [ colinux-Bugs-2013501 ] The configuration file format is fragile

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Bugs item #2013501, was opened at 2008-07-08 15:36
Message generated for change (Comment added) made by henryn
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Category: None
Group: v0.7.x (release)
Status: Open
Resolution: None
Priority: 5
Private: No
Submitted By: Adrien Beau (abeau)
>Assigned to: Henry N. (henryn)
Summary: The configuration file format is fragile

Initial Comment:
While experimenting with cofs, I made the following mistake:

# --- config start ---

# There is no need to bother creating an ISO-9660 image
# for the installation CD-ROM, we can directly point to
# the files downloaded from slackware.at thanks to cofs.
cofs0= C:\Linux\archive\slackware-12.1\www.slackware.at\data\slackware-12.1
#cofs1=D:\
#cofs2=D:\temp

# --- config end ---

The mistake is the space left after the equal sign in the cofs0 line.

coLinux parses this config file as if "cofs0=" was on a line by itself, and then independantly parses C:\Linux\... (being an unknown entity, it is passed as-is to the Linux kernel command line).

The cofs path being empty, is considered a path relative to the configuration file location, so we end up with cofs0 directly pointing to the configuration directory. (A somewhat dangerous configuration I would say, since it also often contains the filesystem images.)

Maybe the parser should be improved so that it ignores the whitespace characters right before and after the first equal sign in the configuration file lines? At least a warning should be added to colinux-daemon.txt.

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>Comment By: Henry N. (henryn)
Date: 2008-07-09 22:11

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Hello Adrien.

many thanks for your bug reports. We will fix it next.

Bebbo, the function GetPrivateProfileString is not usable here. The
command parser should not depend on Windows platform. We have also coLinux
for Linux and a (very long) plan was more platforms. But the second makes
more priority: All not parsed arguments must be forward to Linux kernel
command line, for example a simple "ro" or "root=/dev/...".

Henry

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Comment By: Stefan Franke (bebbo)
Date: 2008-07-08 16:32

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why use an own parser? Simply use the GetPrivateProfileString functio.

=> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms724353.aspx

Bebbo

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Comment By: Adrien Beau (abeau)
Date: 2008-07-08 16:23

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My cofs0 line was broken in two when I posted the bug report. Like I
described, in the config file, I had cofs0= and the C:\Linux path on the
same line, separated by a space.

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