Re: [dev] [slock] chown to root:root on install?

From: Markus Teich <markus.teich_AT_stusta.mhn.de>
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 2015 16:09:12 +0200

Heyho Nick,

Nick wrote:
> Ideally slock should always be owned by the root user, so that it can disable
> the oom lock. I wonder what the right solution is here, as obviously one can't
> chown a file to be owned by root if one isn't root oneself.
>
> One option would be to add a line like this to the install rule of the
> makefile:
>
> _AT_chown root:root ${DESTDIR}${PREFIX}/bin/slock || echo "Could not chown
> root:root ${DESTDIR}${PREFIX}/bin/slock; please do this manually"
>
> Or else add a note to the readme that the make install rule should be run as
> root. I am not in the habit of installing software outside of $HOME, so I
> don't tend to think about elevating to root to install software, so this
> initially confused me.

I think the echo on chown fail is a good solution. If no one has a better idea,
I'll fix that later today.

On a side note: I think capabilities are the safer approach than the suid bit.
However they are not supported by all filesystems. I propose to rename the
install target to `install_suid` and add a new default `install` target which
uses capabilities.

--Markus
Received on Tue Sep 08 2015 - 16:09:12 CEST