Re: breaking up slap_init_user() for better chroot functionality

[Daniel Ott <dott@ncchristian.org>]

Howard Chu wrote:

> Kurt D. Zeilenga wrote:
>
> > At 07:58 AM 10/12/2004, Daniel Ott wrote:
> >  
> >
> > > Why do you think the suggested split would change command line 
> > > semantics?
> > >   
> >
> >
> > Because the modifications would change the password
> > database requirements.
> >  
> To expand on this - it is standard practice to use a customized 
> password database inside a chroot'd environment, not the "real" system 
> database. Altering the behavior here would prevent the use of such a 
> customized database.

I can see why you'd want to have a separate password database if you're 
trying to chroot-jail several daemons or remote logins but as far as 
running a single daemon chroot'd I can't say I'm convinced. I've looked 
at a few other deamons and found that most do the db lookups before the 
chroot. ISC's named even has this comment in the source:

static void
setup(void) {
   isc_result_t result;

   /*
    * Get the user and group information before changing the root
    * directory, so the administrator does not need to keep a copy
    * of the user and group databases in the chroot'ed environment.
    */
   ns_os_inituserinfo(ns_g_username);

It seems to me that daemons that do the lookups after the chroot avoid 
this discussion because there is alot going on related to users after 
the chroot. ftp sessions... mail deliveries in some mail servers... and 
that's probably the case here with the shell, perl and passwd backends.

Anyway, I won't harp on it anymore. Thanks for the discussion, adding 
clarification to the man page and all your work on the project as a whole.

Sincerely,
Daniel Ott