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Systemd-implementation of "rm -rf" Buggy, Could Erase Root Partition

posted by cmn32480 on Monday April 17 2017, @08:34PM   Printer-friendly
from the people-that-live-in-a-bubble dept.

Soylentbob writes:

Edit: The link.

There were lots of good titles for this submission, as in "Breaking news: Poettering clueless?" to finally disprove Betteridge's law, or "systemd surprisingly not as good as advertised" or "Breaking new: systemd broken" or "Poettering censors critics after epic fail".

Systemd implementation of "rm -rf .*" will follow ".." to upper directory and erase /

How to reproduce:
        # mkdir -p /foo/dir{1,2}

        # touch /foo/.bar{1,2}

        # cat /etc/tmpfiles.d/test.conf

        R! /foo/.* - - - - -

        Reboot.

After the issue was fixed, finally Poettering added this gem of wisdom:

I am not sure I'd consider this much of a problem. Yeah, it's a UNIX pitfall, but "rm -rf /foo/.*" will work the exact same way, no?

The answer to this question, as many clarified for him, obviously is a loud "NO!". After being told a couple of times in no uncertain terms, the thread was closed for non-developers

poettering locked and limited conversation to collaborators 4 hours ago

for which I proposed the "freedom-of-speech" department (although I admit it is a weak proposal).

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday April 17 2017, @09:34PM (5 children)

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Monday April 17 2017, @09:34PM (#495525) Journal

    > My first thought when reading the title was: Why on earth does an init system need its own implementation of rm?

    Mine too. This went from "WTF?" to feeling deeply, deeply unclean and doomed, something like I imagine you'd feel if someone told you that 5 years ago you'd had a blood transplant that turned out to have syphilis in it...

    --
    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
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  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday April 18 2017, @07:55AM (4 children)

    by FatPhil (863) <reversethis-{if.fdsa} {ta} {tnelyos-cp}> on Tuesday April 18 2017, @07:55AM (#495744) Homepage
    Ewww, horrible analogy, thank you. I'm not feeling so weird for starting to migrate to Devuan a couple of years ago now.
    (Just for reference, it's "blood transfusion" not transplant, transplants are for solid bits.)
    --
    Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 18 2017, @11:54AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 18 2017, @11:54AM (#495796)

      Maybe it was clotted.

    • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday April 18 2017, @01:53PM (2 children)

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Tuesday April 18 2017, @01:53PM (#495844) Journal

      Good point...I meant to type transfusion, but haven't been sleeping properly for months so...yeah. And I would be a little wary of Devuan; at this point you may as well go full-on FreeBSD or Gentoo if you have the hardware for it. I am beginning to wonder if at some point around 2019 or 2020 Gentoo, Slackware, etc will fork off and call themselves something different, maybe even maintaining their own Linux kernel without the creeping systemd hooks...

      --
      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...

      • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday April 18 2017, @02:14PM (1 child)

        by FatPhil (863) <reversethis-{if.fdsa} {ta} {tnelyos-cp}> on Tuesday April 18 2017, @02:14PM (#495851) Homepage
        Something happened (probably hormonal as I age) about 14 months ago, and my sleep cycle's been right royally messed up since then. At the moment I'm getting pretty good results from popping a single milligram of melatonin about an hour or so before I'd like to be asleep. If it's close to what should be bedtime and I think "I'll take a while to get off", then I just pop the pill, there's no point not doing so. The nice thing about it is that as it's a hormone your body is already very familiar with handling you can pop a few if things are bad, and there are no ill effects. It wears off quickly so there are no repurcussions in the morning. 7e/50 is my target price, as all brands are the same shit deep down.
        --
        Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves

        • (Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday April 18 2017, @05:04PM

          by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 18 2017, @05:04PM (#495912)

          I've had good success with melatonin as well. Using some random gummi brand from amazon.

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