Re: [Texmacs-dev] Re: [Bug #1789] temporary files are created in an insecure way

[david]

On Tue, Feb 25, 2003 at 06:35:00PM +0100, Joris van der Hoeven wrote:
> 
> > The only good reason I see not to put temporary files in "~/.TeXmacs",
> > is that on big systems, the admin will typically tune differently the
> > filesystems of /home and of /tmp. Also, using /tmp ensures that
> > garbage is periodically cleant by the system.
> 
> Well, TeXmacs may clear the garbage itself, as it does already
> (hmm, maybe I forgot about some stuff in ~/.TeXmacs/system)...

That misses the point of putting temp files in a different filesystem.


> No, the caching may improve performance over *several* runs.

I agree. I just think cached stuff should not be in /home.


>   1) I will use ~/.TeXmacs/system/tmp for temporary files.
>   2) Clean temporary files as soon as they are no longer needed.
>   3) Clean ~/.TeXmacs/system/tmp when booting and at (clean) exit.

As stated before I do not think that is quite right.


>   4) Restrict permissions inside ~/.TeXmacs except for ~/.TeXmacs/texts.

A few additional points:

  -- files and directories should be created with the right permission
     (I think the UMASK env variable is of use there).

  -- if the user sets unsafe permissions, texmacs should refuse to
     run.

  -- texmacs should *not* quietly change the permissions of existing
     files or directories.

  -- safe permissions should not restrict reading, only writing.

PS: while we are at it, it would make sense to automatically create
token my-init-texmacs.scm and my-init-buffer.scm which just exec the
corresponding file in TEXMACS_PATH.