Re: [PATCH] Make sure GDB uses a valid shell when starting the inferior and to perform the "shell" command

Sergio Durigan Junior
2015-07-25T23:46:18Z

On Saturday, July 25 2015, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

>> From: Sergio Durigan Junior <sergiodj@redhat.com>
>> Cc: simon.marchi@ericsson.com, gdb-patches@sourceware.org
>> Date: Sat, 25 Jul 2015 13:03:12 -0400
>>
>> The new section says:
>>
>> @node Valid Shell
>> @subsection Valid Shell
>>
>> @value{GDBN} considers a @emph{valid shell} a file that:
>>
>> @enumerate
>> @item
>> Exists and can be executed by the user.
>>
>> @item
>> Is not the @file{/sbin/nologin} (or @file{/usr/sbin/nologin}) program.
>>
>> @item
>> Is not the @file{/bin/false} program.
>> @end enumerate
>>
>> If any of those conditions are not met, the specified shell is not
>> used by @value{GDBN}.
>>
>> I do not see any difference from what I said above, but if you think
>> this text can be improved, or that this text is not needed at all, then
>> by all means feel free to ask this.
>
> The use of "valid" seems to imply much broader goals. Your
> description seems to say that "pseudo-shells used to disable logins"
> is a better (though longer) terminology.
>
> Also, I suggest to say "such as the following", so as not to imply
> that this is necessarily an exhaustive list.

OK, I will make these changes and send a v3.

> Finally, is it really OK to lump here the "cannot be executed by the
> user" case? Maybe we should error out in that case.

I don't think we should error out in this case, since we can fallback to
/bin/sh and display a warning (which is what the patch does). Erroring
out seems too much for me.

--
Sergio
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