Re: [Maxima-discuss] Location of init files?

[Raymond T. <toy...@gm...>]

On Mon, Jul 18, 2022 at 4:51 PM Leo Butler <Leo...@um...> wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 18 2022, Raymond Toy <toy...@gm...> wrote:
>
> > Yes, that's one problem.
> >
> > I'd  really like to change the behavior so that only the user's home
> > directory is searched.  I don't know of any other program that looks for
> > its init files in the current directory.  They're always in some fixed
> > location in the user's home directory.
>
> FWIW, I use the current behaviour. On the other hand, one can set the
> --init command-line flag, so changing the default should be fine.
>

Oh, that complicates things.  --init just sets the file name; it's still
searched in the same places, so it would only be found in the user's home
dir.  What I did for update-examples is use the -p flag to load
maxima-init.lisp from the current dir.  We'd need an equivalent flag (-P?)
to load up a mac file.  Or some other solution.  Or leave everything as is.

>
> Note that building maxima as a regular user can run into bad behaviour
> during `make check' regardless. In this case, maxima will load the
> user's init file--which is almost surely a mistake. The only
> short-circuit that I have discovered is to set MAXIMA_USERDIR=/dev/null.
>
> Leo
>
> >
> > On Mon, Jul 18, 2022 at 10:55 AM Gunter Königsmann <gu...@pe...>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> I would even deem that as a security-relevant bug: Trick someone into
> >> downloading a malicious ini file and then make the same user open a
> >> harmless .mac file hoping it will be downloaded into the same folder.
> >> Perhaps there are easier scenarios for exploiting that feature, though.
> >>



-- 
Ray