Re: [dmidecode] [PATCH] dmidecode: Add an -r option for rfc 4122

[Navin P]

On Fri, May 22, 2015 at 1:32 PM, Jean Delvare <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hi Navin,
>
> Please don't top-post.
>
> Le Friday 22 May 2015 à 12:27 +0530, Navin P a écrit :
>> Thanks Jean.
>>  I used lshal so that it works on uid!=0.
>
> I suppose that hald is reading the information from sysfs or /dev/mem as
> root before dropping the root privileges.
>
>> https://lkml.org/lkml/2015/5/22/67
>> Do you think the above patch is any relevant or you see any downsides of it ?
>
> There have been many people complaining about the inability to read uuid
> and serial numbers as non-root users over the years. Their complaints
> have always been ignored or turned down so far and I can't see this
> changing. UUIDs and serial numbers are considered private information
> which should not be readable by everyone by default.
>
> If you want these values to be world readable on your system, feel free
> to chmod them at boot time. The permissions defined in the dmi-id driver
> are only the default permissions, nothing prevents you from changing
> them at run-time (as root, obviously.)
>

Any particular reason why they shouldn't be world readable ie uuid and
serial numbers for non-root users that you know of ?