Re: pubLynx reinstated LYNX-DEV

[Jonathan Sergent]

Foteos Macrides <address@hidden> wrote:
 ]      I don't plan to use an LYExec() for Unix downloader and printer
 ] options, rather than just ensuring that the LYNXDOWNLOAD: and
 ] LYNXPRINT: URLs are the paths or scripts derived from lynx.cfg, with
 ] quote_path() applied to the arguments.  With the adequate protections
 ] in place, I don't see any reason to block the Unix scripting capability,
 ] which is a much nicer way, for example, to get around zmodem/sz's
 ] inability to handle a second argument, than having to use an external
 ] script file with execl().   The DIRED stuff is using execl(), because
 ] that uses the paths defined in userdefs.h, and no scripts.

I don't see how not using system() and using scripting in downloader and
printer definitions are mutually exclusive.  All that system()
does is execl("sh","-c",arg,(char *)0).  Downloader definitions that
need shell processing (most of them, I guess) could have "sh -c"
prepended to them.

A more backward-compatible way to handle this would be to create
an EXECDOWNLOADER definition syntax of some sort that would run a 
program with the given path with 

     execl(download_command->command, cp, cp1);

... this would allow system admins to create "secure" downloaders.

This is all a bit paranoid I suppose, but an ounce of prevention...


--jss.
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