Nmap Development mailing list archives
Re: Issues on Umit while identifying paths in a portable manner
From: Fyodor <fyodor () insecure org>
Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2007 20:38:32 -0700
On Tue, Aug 07, 2007 at 08:37:09AM -0300, Adriano Monteiro wrote:
files, I figured out that it shouldn't be as such. I got many reports everywhere from users stating that they were having problems with the configuration file location, and also having problems whit old configuration files. Those more experienced with umit, found out that simply removing ~/.umit should solve most of these problems. Unfortunatelly, a regular user won't figure that out so easily.
Hi Adriano. I agree that this is a major issue and am glad you are addressing it. I don't know what the perfect solution is, but maybe your wisdom and help from the nmap-dev community will help. Here are what I consider the biggest problems with the current system: o When you start Umit for the first time, a bunch of critical Umit files are silently copied to your home/data directory. Even if you have never customized them. Then the next time you upgrade Umit, it uses these old files instead of its newer ones. This generally causes the new Umit to crash with a strange warning on startup. But even if that problem was fixed, it would lead to users running old versions of important data files with their new Umit. o Some of those silently copied files include customized path information which often causes problems. For example, if I run umit from the SVN directory, various relative paths get copied to my ~/.umit . Then when I install it and try to run it again from the new install directory, everything crashes. o When I try to run umit from a directory other than that in which the binary resides, I often get a crash. Even if I rm -rf ~/.umit first. For example: flog~>rm -rf ~/.umit flog~>~/umit-sf-svn/trunk/umit Traceback (most recent call last): File "/home/fyodor/umit-sf-svn/trunk/umit", line 47, in ? Path.set_umit_conf(config_files) File "/home/fyodor/umit-sf-svn/trunk/umitCore/Paths.py", line 103, in set_umit_conf config_file = self.config_parser.read(umit_conf) File "/home/fyodor/umit-sf-svn/trunk/umitCore/UmitConfigParser.py", line 60, in read raise Exception("Couldn't find any usable config file!") Exception: Couldn't find any usable config file! o The umit file configuration system is completely undocumented, so users/developers basically have to figure out how it works through trial and error or code reading. I don't know the best solution, but here are some ideas which might work well in various combinations: o Instead of handling changes by copying all of the data files and then letting the user modify them through Umit, you could just save the user's modifications. For example, you could save new scan profiles created by the user in a special file or file section for this purpose. Then after you load in the normal default profiles, you could load in any user-added customized profiles. This approach might not allow users to delete standard profiles, but that is perfectly fine by me. o The files could be copied only when a user actually changes them. Right now, a bunch of files such as options.xml, umit.conf, wizard.xml, profile_editor.xml etc. are copied at first Umit startup even if you never execute a scan or configure anything. o A more reliable approach could be used to store the location of Umit-related files. Nmap compiles the data directory into the binary on Unix, but this causes problems (e.g. we cannot make relocatable RPMs). o The system should be documented Note that Nmap allows you to copy data files such as nmap-os-db, nmap-services, or nmap-service-probes and will use those in preference to the defaults. But Nmap doesn't copy them automatically, so it is assumed that people know what they are getting themselves into when they do so. I hope this helps, even if I don't have a perfect solution :). -F _______________________________________________ Sent through the nmap-dev mailing list http://cgi.insecure.org/mailman/listinfo/nmap-dev Archived at http://SecLists.Org
Current thread:
- Issues on Umit while identifying paths in a portable manner Adriano Monteiro (Aug 07)
- Re: Issues on Umit while identifying paths in a portable manner Eddie Bell (Aug 07)
- Re: Issues on Umit while identifying paths in a portable manner Diman Todorov (Aug 07)
- Re: Issues on Umit while identifying paths in a portable manner Guilherme Polo (Aug 07)
- Re: Issues on Umit while identifying paths in a portable manner DePriest, Jason R. (Aug 07)
- Re: Issues on Umit while identifying paths in a portable manner Adriano Monteiro (Aug 07)
- Re: Issues on Umit while identifying paths in a portable manner Fyodor (Aug 07)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- Fwd: Issues on Umit while identifying paths in a portable manner Diman Todorov (Aug 07)
- Re: Issues on Umit while identifying paths in a portable manner João Medeiros (Aug 07)