[SM-Discuss] Anyone interested in a mlocate spell?

Robert Figura rfigura at aubergine.zwischengesicht.de
Tue Nov 11 13:14:07 EST 2008


seth at swoolley.homeip.net wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 07:36:04AM +0000, Ethan Grammatikidis wrote:
> > It may be complicated, but the locate bundled with findutils is not
> > appropriate for some systems. It shows the existence of files that a
> > user should not ordinarily be able to see. Mlocate, being derived from
> > slocate (secure locate), doesn't have this issue. Also I remember
> > findutils locate being noticably slower at searching the database than
> > slocate, but I may be going back to when findutils depended on perl.
> 
> So you've identified a possible security issue.  Keep this in mind.

It's only a security issue if you decide to use updatedb ;^)

Not sure wether we should warn inexperienced admins... maybe yes...

I may not grok this correctly but removing the locate binary install
merely seems to be something to make it compatible with mlocate.

Just my 2c,
 Regards
  Robert Figura

-- 
/* mandlsig.c 0.42 (c) by Robert Figura */
I=1702;float O,o,i;main(l){for(;I--;putchar("oO .,\nt>neo.ckgel-t\
agidif@<ra urig FrtbeRo"[I%74?I>837&874>I?I^833:l%5:5]))for(O=o=l=
0;O*O+o*o<(16^l++);o=2*O*o+I/74/11.-1,O=i)i=O*O-o*o+I%74*.04-2.2;}


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