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Date:      Fri, 18 Jan 2002 19:34:19 -0500 (EST)
From:      Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org>
To:        Greg Lehey <grog@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:  <Pine.NEB.3.96L.1020118193019.28442D-100000@fledge.watson.org>
In-Reply-To: <20020119105733.A50299@wantadilla.lemis.com>

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On Sat, 19 Jan 2002, Greg Lehey wrote:

> > 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. 

He suggested the compression was a problem, so I objected that it wasn't
changed.  Installing the existing catman distribution already eliminates
all performance concerns by simply never rendering the pages on user-time.
Making that the default might be a reasonable choice if we turn off
setuid.

> I can think of a couple of compromises:
> 
> 1.  Just don't install /usr/share/man/catman.

That was what was being proposed initially: remove the setuid bit on man,
and then allow the user to either install pre-generated catman, or not
install it at all.

> 2.  Use a different user ID or group for catman, and make man(1)
>     setuid or setgid to that.

That's what is currently there.  Is this supposed to be different somehow?

> >> 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? 

The difference between the developers and the users is that the users
hardly ever change the man pages, and so would probably benefit most from
simply using the catman pages in a pregenerated form, rather than having
to wait for each page to render the first time they read it, gradually
consuming more and more disk space as they read more manpages.  This
disagreement is all about how developers might change man pages, and
therefore need them regenerated, which as has been pointed out, is not
something that "the man on the street" does.

Robert N M Watson             FreeBSD Core Team, TrustedBSD Project
robert@fledge.watson.org      NAI Labs, Safeport Network Services



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