Re: [SECURITY PATCH 116/117] templates: Disable the os-prober by default

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Wed, Mar 03, 2021 at 02:13:04PM +0100, Daniel Kiper wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 02, 2021 at 10:49:16PM +0100, Didier Spaier wrote:
> > Le 02/03/2021 à 19:02, Daniel Kiper a écrit :
> > > From: Alex Burmashev <alexander.burmashev@oracle.com>
> > > diff --git a/util/grub.d/30_os-prober.in b/util/grub.d/30_os-prober.in
> > > index 1b91c102f..80685b15f 100644
> > > --- a/util/grub.d/30_os-prober.in
> > > +++ b/util/grub.d/30_os-prober.in
> > > @@ -26,7 +26,8 @@ export TEXTDOMAINDIR="@localedir@"
> > >   . "$pkgdatadir/grub-mkconfig_lib"
> > > -if [ "x${GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER}" = "xtrue" ]; then
> > > +if [ "x${GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER}" = "xfalse" ]; then
> > > +  gettext_printf "os-prober will not be executed to detect other 
> > > bootable partitions.\nSystems on them will not be added to the GRUB boot 
> > > configuration.\nCheck GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER documentation entry.\n"
> > >     exit 0
> > >   fi
> >
> > This is confusing: now to get boot entries from os-prober one have to
> > set:
> > GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=true
> > in /etc/default/grub.
> >
> > Either revert that, or (better, in my opinion) label the variable
> > GRUB_ENABLE_OS_PROBER and set it to false by default.
> 
> When we worked on this patch we considered that. However, after some
> thinking we stated that renaming to GRUB_ENABLE_OS_PROBER will make
> more confusion. So, we decided to stick to existing name even if it
> is not the best one.

How does that make any sense?

You can disable it by default, but leave the meaning of true and false
and the name the same.  Someone would then have to explicitly set
GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER to false if they want to use it still.  At least
then it makes some sense.

And what does the code do now if someone already has it set to true in
order to disable it, as is in all existing examples and documentation
about the option?  Does it now actually get enabled which is the opposite
of what they wanted?

Something sure looks wrong with this.

-- 
Len Sorensen