On Wed, 9 Feb 2005, Alistair Crooks wrote:

> > pkg_delete was changed to output "Executing" lines from rmdir, etc.
> >
> > This can make for a lot of output, such as updating perl which has at
> > least a couple screen fulls scroll by.
> >
> > Can we have the "Executing" lines be optional based on the Verbose switch?
>
> They used to be based on the verbose switch.  I modified it so that
> they weren't.
>
> The reason for this is one of security.  For almost all users, these
> commands are run as the root user; the commands are taken from a file
> in the filesystem hierarchy (which is not itself checksummed).  From a
> security POV, I want to know what commands are being run, even if you
> don't want to, because files can be modified, made to point to
> additional scripts, etc.

I am not sure how this could be useful for security. Having numerous
"rmdir" lines scroll by makes it so nobody would want to read the output
in the first place and it also hides any more interesting messages.

Anyways, we trust that the package didn't install anything malicious in
the first place and we already trust the INSTALL and DEINSTALL scripts.

> FYI, this was a fix that was requested a number of years ago by the
> NetBSD security officer, and I have only just got around to fixing it.

The NetBSD security officer wanted hundreds of "rmdir" messages scrolling
by? Maybe we can make it so it doesn't report it when it is rmdir?

> I wouldn't be averse to adding a -q switch (for quiet), but
> (a) I'm afraid that you'll have to do it yourself, and
> (b) it's not going to be the default


 Jeremy C. Reed

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