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A. /usr/local has never ever been writable by a nonprivileged user. Every standard that exists, including the principle of least surprise, is emphatic on that p

by quesera 11y ago

A. /usr/local has never ever been writable by a nonprivileged user. Every standard that exists, including the principle of least surprise, is emphatic on that point. The security implications of "any other way" are massive. B. If Linus or the FHS changed their ways in this, there would be outrage. It's inappropriate and just plain dumb. [edit: I shouldn't have said "dumb", please replace with "in violation of all guarantees of system integrity".] C. See above. You apparently have issues with SIP. That's a separate issue from the current thread, but OK. You should reboot to securely change nvram settings that will allow you to manipulate the protected zone of the file system (including /usr) because this concession to inconvenience saves you from privilege escalation attacks. The real question is why you deleted /usr/local in the first place. It's standard OSX, and always has been. If you deleted it before SIP, but object to its absence now that SIP applies to the directory where it lives...I'm not sure how to help.

alextgordon 11y ago
Where in FHS does it specify that system and user files should be put in /Applications /Library /Network /System /User Information /Users /Volumes ?
- quesera 11y ago
  FHS does not apply to OSX. Never has, never will.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    He's asking because you brought FHS up.
    - quesera 11y ago
      Under B, as an example of standards by another vendor who would be pilloried if they allowed the same lackadaisical approach to preserving system permissions integrity. In response to the comment that Apple was being unreasonable. Apologies if that was not clear.
DannyBee 11y ago
A. Single user systems are not the same as server systems, and plenty of single user systems have had the equivalent of /usr/local as writable. If you want to argue this security is worth it, that's a different argument. I suspect most people who just want to get shit done are going to find it a huge pain in the ass. You can also argue these people are stupid. As for standards, vendors follow FHS and friends exactly as far as it helps them justify whatever they want to do. If you really want to argue from the perspective that "this is standard and that's the reason it's done", that seems awfully silly to me given the layout and other permissions of apple systems. It's pretty non-FHS/etc to have /Applications be writable, for example. B. let's be clear: there is outrage no matter what is changed and why, and the argument is always "it is inappropriate and dumb". So this statement is fairly independent of this change.
- quesera 11y ago
  A. OSX is not a single user system. It inherits from various Unixes, and no Unix has ever had nonprivileged writability on any directory under /usr. FHS does not apply to OSX in any way. Why do people think so? Also, /Applications is not writable by nonprivileged users either! Agreed on ~"changes yield outrage", but in this case, it's just a software application vendor violating obvious historical and specific guidelines from software OS vendor, and people blaming OS vendor when things break. This perplexes me.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    You might just as productively argue that there is no such thing as a modern single-user system, since Windows isn't that either. His point is pretty clear. OTOH: The debate here is a little confusing. What SIP is doing w/r/t/ /usr/local isn't unprecedented; securelevels and the immutable flag could have the same effect on OpenBSD all the way back in the 1990s.
    - quesera 11y ago
      > You might just as productively argue that there is no such thing as a modern single-user system, since Windows isn't that either. His point is pretty clear. Correct, and nonprivileged users can't install software globally on Windows either. Because it's now a modern OS, and that's how things are done. For very good reasons. His point, as far as I can tell, amounts to: applications should be able to trash permissions on convenient directories and not have the OS complain or repair their damage. Perhaps I'm being ungenerous here? I apologize if so. On re read, I realize that tptacek is responding only to the SIP part of the discussion. OK, SIP is surprising to desktop computer users. But it's a good feature that requires a little adjustment to work with. But really not much, and none for the vast majority of users who don't muck with system directories.

by quesera 11y ago

alextgordon 11y ago

Where in FHS does it specify that system and user files should be put in /Applications /Library /Network /System /User Information /Users /Volumes ?

quesera 11y ago
FHS does not apply to OSX. Never has, never will.
- tptacek 11y ago
  He's asking because you brought FHS up.
  - quesera 11y ago
    Under B, as an example of standards by another vendor who would be pilloried if they allowed the same lackadaisical approach to preserving system permissions integrity. In response to the comment that Apple was being unreasonable. Apologies if that was not clear.

DannyBee 11y ago

A. Single user systems are not the same as server systems, and plenty of single user systems have had the equivalent of /usr/local as writable. If you want to argue this security is worth it, that's a different argument. I suspect most people who just want to get shit done are going to find it a huge pain in the ass. You can also argue these people are stupid. As for standards, vendors follow FHS and friends exactly as far as it helps them justify whatever they want to do. If you really want to argue from the perspective that "this is standard and that's the reason it's done", that seems awfully silly to me given the layout and other permissions of apple systems. It's pretty non-FHS/etc to have /Applications be writable, for example. B. let's be clear: there is outrage no matter what is changed and why, and the argument is always "it is inappropriate and dumb". So this statement is fairly independent of this change.

quesera 11y ago
A. OSX is not a single user system. It inherits from various Unixes, and no Unix has ever had nonprivileged writability on any directory under /usr. FHS does not apply to OSX in any way. Why do people think so? Also, /Applications is not writable by nonprivileged users either! Agreed on ~"changes yield outrage", but in this case, it's just a software application vendor violating obvious historical and specific guidelines from software OS vendor, and people blaming OS vendor when things break. This perplexes me.
- tptacek 11y ago
  You might just as productively argue that there is no such thing as a modern single-user system, since Windows isn't that either. His point is pretty clear. OTOH: The debate here is a little confusing. What SIP is doing w/r/t/ /usr/local isn't unprecedented; securelevels and the immutable flag could have the same effect on OpenBSD all the way back in the 1990s.
  - quesera 11y ago
    > You might just as productively argue that there is no such thing as a modern single-user system, since Windows isn't that either. His point is pretty clear. Correct, and nonprivileged users can't install software globally on Windows either. Because it's now a modern OS, and that's how things are done. For very good reasons. His point, as far as I can tell, amounts to: applications should be able to trash permissions on convenient directories and not have the OS complain or repair their damage. Perhaps I'm being ungenerous here? I apologize if so. On re read, I realize that tptacek is responding only to the SIP part of the discussion. OK, SIP is surprising to desktop computer users. But it's a good feature that requires a little adjustment to work with. But really not much, and none for the vast majority of users who don't muck with system directories.