[mythtv] [mythtv-commits] Ticket #4593: /.mythtv/ should *not* get created (blank homedir)
Michael T. Dean
mtdean at thirdcontact.com
Tue Feb 5 23:34:23 UTC 2008
On 02/05/2008 05:41 PM, Nigel Pearson wrote:
> Ignoring will not be a quick patch though -
> it has to support Unix, Unix running as root
> (where HOME might actually be '/'), and Windows.
As far as running on *nix as root where HOME is "/", I think we should
prevent this, too. According to the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard, the
recommended default location for the home directory for the root user is
/root (
http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#ROOTHOMEDIRECTORYFORTHEROOTUSER
). Though it also allows the location to be determined by developer or
local preference, it specifically forbids applications from creating or
requiring special files or subdirectories in the root directory (
http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#THEROOTFILESYSTEM ).
TTBOMK, no distro sets the root user's HOME directory to '/' (and if
they do, they should be fixed). The only issues we've had where the
"HOME" directory was interpreted as '/' were due to
QDir::homeDirPath()'s returning '/' when no HOME was set and
improperly-configured distros/user installs running, i.e. mythbackend
(or--shudder--X/mythfrontend), directly from an init script without even
setting a HOME variable.
So, I'd recommend refusing to use "/" as the immediate parent of the
conf dir on all *nix systems.
Mike
More information about the mythtv-dev
mailing list