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

[Jean Delvare]

Le Friday 22 May 2015 à 14:37 +0530, Navin P a écrit :
> 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 ?

Well, as I just wrote above: "UUIDs and serial numbers are considered
private information which should not be readable by everyone by
default." Not everybody likes to be identified uniquely by random
3rd-party software.

-- 
Jean Delvare
SUSE L3 Support