[asterisk-dev] [Code Review] 3972: Change DAHDI_UDEV_HOOK_DIR to honor --prefix

[Oron Peled]

Hi,

On Wednesday 03 September 2014 13:57:11 David Lee wrote:
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> https://reviewboard.asterisk.org/r/3972/
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> ...
> I'm a bit wierd, and I configure asterisk with --prefix=/opt/asterisk,
> so that I can install it without running as root. The install script
> for the DAHDI hook scripts were hard coded to install into /usr/share,
> which foils my weirdness.
> 
> This patch changes the install location for the DAHDI hook scripts to
> honor --prefix. It also moves the variable in the Makefile so that it
> doesn't get between the _MAKEOPTS variables and the comment describing
> them.

The first problem, is that installing the hook script into an arbitrary
location is useless, since DAHDI will not run it -- DAHDI looks at
very specific directories to run its hooks and that's why the directory
was hard-coded in the first place.

But your scenario has a problem at a deeper level:
 * DAHDI runs the hook scripts via udev rules.
 * This means they are running as root.
 * If it was possible for a regular user to run their own scripts
   as root... well you see the implications.

While we could think about "dropping-privileges" while running these scripts:
 * It won't solve your problem, because the scripts would still run as
   a *specific* user -- not necessarily yourself.

 * Also, such a move would make most of these scripts useless as they won't
   be able to write configuration into DAHDI drivers (via sysfs) -- which
   is the reason for their existence.

So I don't see a way which would achieve what you want -- i.e: install
as a regular user *and* with DAHDI support. OTOH, build+install of
asterisk *without* DAHDI support should not have this problem (otherwise
it's a bug which should be fixed).

Sorry,

-- 
Oron Peled                                 Voice: +972-4-8228492
oron at actcom.co.il                  http://users.actcom.co.il/~oron
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