LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Alan Kennington <akenning@dog.topology.org>
  To  : Geoffrey D. Bennett <g@netcraft.com.au>
  Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 02:01:04 +101800

Re: php3 configuration and mutt/pgp configuration

On Fri, Jan 07, 2000 at 01:33:27AM +1030, Geoffrey D. Bennett wrote:
> 
> Could you clarify what you mean by "free reign over a virtual host,
> except for one sub-directory"?  That they should be able to write
> anywhere in eg. /home/httpd/virtualhost/ except for
> /home/httpd/virtualhost/protecteddir?

Yes, that's precisely what I meant.
I.e. I want to be able to let someone else do all the passive
front-end stuff, and then I maintain sovereignty over
the active back-end stuff.
I'm assuming that without access to scripts of any
sort (and without the ability to set arbitrary symbolic links etc.),
a virtual host content designer should not be able to
create anything that could endanger my system.

> Safe mode would seem to be a good idea.  I've noticed that it prevents
> you from executing anything that's not in the safe mode dir (which on
> one system I used defaulted to /usr/bin, so I'd suggest setting it
> explicitly).

Good.
That should mean that I could even let a virtual host content
designer use PHP3, and still stop them executing anything nasty,
or anything that is not their own file.

The safe_mode facility does seem to be designed to prevent
a content developer from getting out of a restricted
directory sub-tree, and therefore it is ideal for that -- if
I can really trust it.
But my trouble came when I wanted to use safe_mode to stop
a content editor from using PHP3 at all.

It looks like the story is then:

1.	To stop a content developer on my host from using
	any PHP3 at all, use the "<Directory ...>
	AddType ... .php3 </Directory>" construct.

2.	To _permit_ a content developer to use PHP3 on
	my host, use the "safe_mode" construct to
	stop them from doing anything harmful,
	accidentally or intentionally.

If I as hostmaster am the PHP3 developer, then I guess I
don't need the safe_mode, unless I don't trust myself.


I take it there is no O'Reilly book on this yet.
The O'Reilly Apache book gives PHP3 about 1/2 of a line
(page 203). I don't find any PHP3 book at oreilly.com.

Cheerio,
Alan Kennington.