Hi, A long time ago, Daniel posted a patch which would do a security check of .gdbinit files and refuse to execute them if they were untrusted. See http://sourceware.org/ml/gdb-patches/2005-05/msg00637.html . I would like to resurrect that discussion. At the time, there was some debate about whether simply refusing to read the file was particularly user-unfriendly for a lot of developers. Someone suggested adding an option to override the behavior and so on. Overall, people agreed that doing something was correct. I have implemented a slightly different option: ask the user if he would like to run the untrusted file any way, much like removing a write-protected file IMO. Fedora has been using a version of this patch (essentially Daniel's original patch) for several years, and I'm sure that other distros have their own versions, too. No regressions on x86_64-linux. [mingw32 does not appear to have getuid. It builds without HAVE_GETUID.] Comments? Keith ChangeLog 2010-11-19 Keith Seitz From Daniel Jacobowitz and Jeff Johnston : * cli/cli-cmds.h (find_and_open_script): Add from_tty argument. * cli/cli-cmds.c (find_and_open_script): Likewise. When from_tty is -1, perform a security check of the file. If it fails, warn the user and whether he wants to read the file anyway. (source_script_with_search): Update call find_and_open_script. Only print an error if from_tty is greater than zero. * main.c (captured_main): Pass from_tty = -1 when sourcing gdbinit files. testsuite/ChangeLog 2010-11-19 Keith Seitz From Jeff Johnston : * gdb.base/gdbinit.sample: New file. * gdb.base/gdbinit.exp: New file. doc/ChangeLog 2010-11-19 Keith Seitz * gdb.texinfo (Startup): Document security handling of .gdbinit files.