[gentoo-user] Re: portage directory ownerships?

[james <wireless@tampabay.rr.com>]

Fernando Rodriguez <frodriguez.developer <at> outlook.com> writes:


> > Here, all of /etc/portage is root:root

This is what I have except for distfiles::
drwxrwxr-x    5 root portage 232K Sep 14 23:00 distfiles

root.portage ???  I guess portage does that. Fernando's explaination
seem plausible, I guess I'd have to look at the code (not today) 
but this just seems strange to me that sys-apps/portage would do this...

> > The tree and all overlays are portage:portage

Mine are root.root but no harm, right? I guess I could change them 
recursively to portage:portage but why, if portage is just going
to do what it wants anyway.



> > You can make a local overlay owned by user you want, stuff you hack away
> > at yourself should probably be james:james or james:users

Yea, I gonna think about /usr/local/portage. I see the convenience of
your suggestion, but I have always had most everthing portage:portage.
I cannot remember why though.....

> > 
> > Typically, permissions in /etc/portage are the usual 755 for dirs and
> > 644 for files
> > 
> > I set overlays and the tree to be 2775 for dirs and 664 for files

Yea, I have just let portage do what it wants and never really thought
about it before. This seem reasonable.


> > Permissions should be what YOU need them to be on your computer. There's
> > a default, it's what portage makes them when you install stuff

yep, it makes sense that sys-apps/portage is the master of these files,
I just never thought about it much before.


> > Only root should change the master config files in /etc, just like in
> > all other apps IIRC emerge can drop privs to a user account, if that  
> > user is portage  then portage must own the files

Ah. makes sense.

> 
> It is true that portage drops privileges to the portage account (unless the 
> ebuild has RESTRICT="userpriv" or I think FEATURES="-userpriv" on make.conf) 

Nope these are not set on my make.conf (600) on permissions).

> but it doesn't need to write to the portage tree except to the distfiles 
> directory so I don't know of any reason to have everything owned by 
> portage:portage if the perms are 755/644.

Ah, this is whay my distfiles is root:portage.....?

> 
> Mine is owned by root:root because it got borked one time after a sync so I 
> deleted it and copied from another box manually. The only problem I ever had 
> is that a fetch failed, and I just chowned the distfiles dir to
portage:portage 
> to fix it. Only recently it was pointed to me on this list that it was
supposed 
> to be portage:portage. I never changed it back to portage:portage but I
made a 
> mental note not to forget about it in case of trouble, that way I'll learn
why 
> that's the default if/when something breaks :) Besides it offers some
(limited) 
> protection against an ebuild accidentally writing to your portage tree.

Interesting. I guess I could look at the code but everything is working
fine.


> > > In my /usr/local/portage and it's subdirs where I hack on many 
> > > ebuild, portage.portage owns everything.....?
> > 
> > Make your life easy, chaown that stuff to james
> 
> I personally prefer root:root because I think it is more secure. If you let 
> somebody use your account even for a minute s/he could modify an ebuild 
> without a password to install whatever s/he wants next time you run an update.

I like Alan's simplicity. I also like root:root, like my /usr/portage,
but most of it is portage:portage, and that I did do. I just cant
remember why.

usr/local/portage/  is the one I need to think about.

Thanks for the feedback guys,
James