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

Sergio Durigan Junior
2015-07-25T16:30:00Z

On Saturday, July 25 2015, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

>> > And even if we do, there's plenty of time
>> > till the next release to hear from those who might be negatively
>> > impacted.
>>
>> I don't think that's true. The number of users who go build and use gdb
>> from the master branch is probably negligible. If this affects some users,
>> it will most likely be when it gets released in distros (months or years
>> after the actual release, depending on the distro).
>
> Fine, have it your way, and let's see if that flies. I thought the
> fact that we've got 2 additional candidates in less than 1 day is
> evidence that more will follow, but I guess we will see.

Maybe I should have been more clear about what I want to achieve with
this patch.

My goal was not to match every possible invalid shell out there, nor to
make sure that the specified shell is a known and valid shell. My goal
was to make sure that the shell exists, is an executable, and is not
something that is commonly used to disable logins (/sbin/nologin or
/bin/false are the obvious candidates here).

The 2 additional candidates that have been mentioned were actually just
1: I did not remember to include /bin/false in the list before, but
/usr/sbin/nologin is nologin (and I could even just check for the
basename as you proposed in another message, eliminating the need to
include checks for {,/usr}).

I don't think we will see the list of non-shells expanding much more.
One can always say "Hey, but /bin/ls is a not a shell!", and we will say
"Right, and it is not commonly used as shell anyway".

Finally, I don't want to forbid the user to specify her own shell to run
the inferior, and to name her shell as she wants.

Thanks,

--
Sergio
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