/ is writable on mac... leading to lots of awkward msi droppings?
Quentin Paris informs me that the root directory is user-writable on MacOSX (shudder), which means our beloved z: mapping leads to lots of garbage directories named e.g. /fd91216cc2ce81eb2ce16a058619 after running msi installers. Is this something Wine's msi could avoid doing?
On 1/5/11 12:31 AM, Dan Kegel wrote:
Quentin Paris informs me that the root directory is user-writable on MacOSX (shudder), which means our beloved z: mapping leads to lots of garbage directories named e.g. /fd91216cc2ce81eb2ce16a058619 after running msi installers. Now where would he get that idea from?
chips-computer:~ chip$ uname # show that this is Darwin (Mac OS X) Darwin chips-computer:~ chip$ ls -ld / # show permissions of root directory drwxr-xr-x 39 root admin 1394 Nov 15 09:00 / chips-computer:~ chip$ mkdir /a # try to create something in / mkdir: /a: Permission denied At least on my Mac, only root gets to write to /. Chip
On 1/5/11 1:18 AM, Charles Davis wrote:
On 1/5/11 12:31 AM, Dan Kegel wrote:
Quentin Paris informs me that the root directory is user-writable on MacOSX (shudder), which means our beloved z: mapping leads to lots of garbage directories named e.g. /fd91216cc2ce81eb2ce16a058619 after running msi installers. Now where would he get that idea from?
chips-computer:~ chip$ uname # show that this is Darwin (Mac OS X) Darwin chips-computer:~ chip$ ls -ld / # show permissions of root directory drwxr-xr-x 39 root admin 1394 Nov 15 09:00 / chips-computer:~ chip$ mkdir /a # try to create something in / mkdir: /a: Permission denied
At least on my Mac, only root gets to write to /. Huh. That's funny. I checked my other Mac (my second one), and its root directory was group-writable by group 'admin' (the System Administrators' group):
chip(a)chips-computer-3 ~ $ ls -ld / drwxrwxr-t 40 root admin 1428 Nov 18 08:43 / Maybe I changed it on the first one. Oh well. Unfortunately, most Macs happen to be single-user systems where the user belongs to the 'admin' group. (Otherwise, it would be impossible to become root at all, especially since the root account is completely disabled.) That should explain what Quentin observed about writing to /. Personally, I think everyone should just 'sudo chmod g-w /'. But that's just me. Most Mac users don't even know what 'Terminal' is, let alone understand the purpose of the magic incantation I just recited. But why is MSI putting anything in Z:\ at all? I'm guessing those folders really belong in the temp directory; if the temp dir is Z:\, then we really need to fix that. No program should be using the root directory as a dumping ground :). On both my Macs, TEMP and TMP are set to the Temp directory in my Wine home directory, so I really wouldn't understand why MSI is dumping stuff in Z:\. Chip
On Wed, 5 Jan 2011, Charles Davis wrote:
On 1/5/11 1:18 AM, Charles Davis wrote:
On 1/5/11 12:31 AM, Dan Kegel wrote:
Quentin Paris informs me that the root directory is user-writable on MacOSX (shudder), which means our beloved z: mapping leads to lots of garbage directories named e.g. /fd91216cc2ce81eb2ce16a058619 after running msi installers. Now where would he get that idea from?
<<snip>>
But why is MSI putting anything in Z:\ at all? I'm guessing those folders really belong in the temp directory; if the temp dir is Z:\, then we really need to fix that. No program should be using the root directory as a dumping ground :).
It's not just Macs -- it seems to be a global .msi issue. I'm no Windows guru, but I find several of those directories on Windows machines I administer as well (in C:\). I've never taken the time to dig deeper, but they seem to be left over from _failed_ installs. As far as permissions to write in the root directory, an installer has to be running with administrator rights to be mucking around in system directories no matter how it gets those rights -- directory permissions, sudo, UACs, whatever. Steve Brown sbrown7(a)umbc.edu
On Wed, 2011-01-05 at 07:31 +0000, Dan Kegel wrote:
Quentin Paris informs me that the root directory is user-writable on MacOSX (shudder), which means our beloved z: mapping leads to lots of garbage directories named e.g. /fd91216cc2ce81eb2ce16a058619 after running msi installers.
Got an example installer I can try?
participants (4)
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Charles Davis -
Dan Kegel -
Hans Leidekker -
Steve Brown