| Subject: | Pod::Perldoc can't drop privs on OS X. Reinstate -U? Stop being so paranoid? |
Due to a bug in Perl and/or OS X, Pod::Perldoc can't drop privledges, so perldoc can't be used as superuser.
$ sudo perldoc Foo
Superuser must not run /usr/bin/perldoc without security audit and taint checks.
$ uname -a
Darwin windhund.schwern.org 6.4 Darwin Kernel Version 6.4: Wed Jan 29 18:50:42 PST 2003; root:xnu/xnu-344.26.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC Power Macintosh powerpc
This is because the UID of nobody on OS X is -2 for some bizarre reason only Apple knows. getpwnam() gets (rightfully) confused and returns the uid as 2**32-2. Pod::Perldoc tries to setuid to that with no luck.
A cheap work around for this is to reinstate the -U "run insecurely" flag for which I've supplied a patch.
An even cheaper work around is to just drop the die statement completely. Of all the places to start being paranoid, perldoc is a pretty odd place to do it. The security audit was added by Tom three years ago with the comment "It's still spaghetti code that deserves to be burnt to ashes."
http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl5-porters/2000-03/msg00957.html
http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl5-porters/2000-03/msg01011.html
Well, its been burned to ashes and rebuilt.
--- lib/Pod/Perldoc.pm 2003/04/08 09:59:33 1.1
+++ lib/Pod/Perldoc.pm 2003/04/08 10:00:48
@@ -57,7 +57,7 @@
#
# Option accessors...
-foreach my $subname (map "opt_$_", split '', q{mhlvriFfXqnTd}) {
+foreach my $subname (map "opt_$_", split '', q{mhlvriFfXqnTdU}) {
no strict 'refs';
*$subname = do{ use strict 'refs'; sub () { shift->_elem($subname, @_) } };
}
@@ -119,8 +119,6 @@
exit;
}
-sub opt_U {} # legacy no-op
-
sub opt_t { # choose plaintext as output format
my $self = shift;
$self->opt_o_with('text') if @_ and $_[0];
@@ -256,6 +254,7 @@
-w formatter_option:option_value
-X use index if present (looks for pod.idx at $Config{archlib})
-q Search the text of questions (not answers) in perlfaq[1-9]
+ -U Run in insecure mode (superuser only)
PageName|ModuleName...
is the name of a piece of documentation that you want to look at. You
@@ -1609,7 +1608,7 @@
$> = $id; # effective uid
};
die "Superuser must not run $0 without security audit and taint checks.\n"
- unless !$@ && $< && $>;
+ unless $self->opt_U || (!$@ && $< && $>);
}
return;
}