Re: Healing the bash fork

[gremlin () gremlin ru]

On 30-Sep-2014 11:30:52 +0200, Florian Weimer wrote:

> > > > What is the motivation to not store executable code (functions)
> > > > differently from standard variables?

> > > What would you use for such a store, considering the environment
> > > is the only portable way to pass this information from one
> > > process to another in the general case, and support the current
> > > set of use cases?

> > C.O. to the rescue: temporary file.

> You cannot use a named temporary file because the creator does
> not know its required lifetime. That's a challenge all solutions
> not based on the process environment will face.

Creator doesn't, but (grand)*child does: open it, unlink it, read it,
close it. Once the shell needs to run something, it can create a new
file with exported stuff. Garbage collection should be thought of,
but it's out-of-scope for this discussion.

> Theoretically, you could pass an unnamed temporary file via a file
> descriptor, and communicate the descriptor number in some safe way
> (but what's that, if you don't trust the environment?).

Generally, the environment is unsafe because it may be filled by any
(grand)*parent process.

> But that's going to be far less interoperable than what we currently
> have, and barely more secure.

If the attacker needs to create the file AND to fill the environment
variable to succeed, that more likely is more secure. Or am I missing
something?

> > If one shell instance needs to pass some functions to another,
> > it could dump those functions to a temporary file and pass the
> > --load (or, better, --load-functions) options with a filename
> > parameter.
> We need to keep support exporting functions to grandchildren
> through non-bash processes (that is, bash - some-other-program
> - bash).

Hmmm... Well, requiring both a file and an environment variable may
be a good solution. Or not.


-- 
Alexey V. Vissarionov aka Gremlin from Kremlin <gremlin ПРИ gremlin ТЧК ru>
GPG: 8832FE9FA791F7968AC96E4E909DAC45EF3B1FA8 @ hkp://keys.gnupg.net