Re: Use current directory for POSIX mkdir test in install-sh

[Paul Eggert]

"Alex Unleashed" <address@hidden> writes:

> the fact of the attempt is what
> really matters,

I'm afraid I'll have to disagree on this one, as a matter of
philosophy.  Autoconf regularly tries stuff to see whether it works.
It's not at all unreasonable for Autoconf to try programs that have
memory violations, or attempt to do other prohibited operations, in
order for the Autoconf-generated code to discover what capabilities
the system actually lets the installer do.  If your sandboxing
environment prohibits reasonable requests for information about what
the environment allows, then it's being too strict.

In this particular case, stricter auditing did find a bug in FreeBSD
mkdir -p -m, and that's certainly a point in its favor.  But I'm not
sure it's a good idea in general.

I guess I'd feel more comfortable with a sandbox where the installer
ran as root, and actually could do a "chmod 0 /" or whatever, and
where the auditing process discovered the sandbox was corrupted; I
think this would detect problems like these more reliably.  (Obviously
though you're doing the work so it's up to you.  :-)