Bug 158483

Summary: Starting "yast firewall" as regular user has bad failure modes
Product: [openSUSE] SUSE Linux 10.1 Reporter: Gerald Pfeifer <gp>
Component: YaST2Assignee: Lukas Ocilka <locilka>
Status: RESOLVED FIXED QA Contact: Klaus Kämpf <kkaempf>
Severity: Major    
Priority: P5 - None CC: suse-beta
Version: Beta 8   
Target Milestone: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: SuSE Linux 10.1   
Whiteboard:
Found By: Development Services Priority:
Business Priority: Blocker: ---
Marketing QA Status: --- IT Deployment: ---
Attachments: YaST log from a SLES10 Beta7 machine (ia64)

Description Gerald Pfeifer 2006-03-16 01:35:11 UTC
When one inadvertedly starts "yast firewall" as regular user instead of
root, no message indicates that this is not appropriate.

However, even though the firewall is running, the dialog then claims
"Current Status: Firewall is not running" and has the "Start Firewall
Now" button enabled.


If one selects "Save Setting and Restart Firewall Now", there are two
error messages: "Error: Cannot write settings to /etc/sysconfig/SuSEFirewall"
followed by "Error: Writing settings failed".  

This, issuing two similar error messages one after the other, is a
something we should fix as well.
Comment 1 Michael Gross 2006-03-16 14:22:42 UTC
Please attach the YaST logfiles (/var/log/YaST2). How is it possible that you are even able to call the firewall module?
Comment 2 Gerald Pfeifer 2006-03-18 11:16:15 UTC
Invoking the firewall module as as easy as running

  yast firewall

from the shell.  I'll attach the logs in a minute, but you can easily
reproduce this with SL10.0, SL10.1 Beta8 on i386 and SLES10 Beta7 on ia64.
Comment 3 Gerald Pfeifer 2006-03-18 11:18:55 UTC
Created attachment 73808 [details]
YaST log from a SLES10 Beta7 machine (ia64)
Comment 4 Michael Gross 2006-03-20 16:45:06 UTC
Gerald, please notice bug #159375, which was CLOSED->INVALID, this is about the same issue. However I will redirect this one to the yast2-firewall maintainer.
Comment 5 Lukas Ocilka 2006-03-21 07:39:07 UTC
I guess anybody is able to reproduce this issue since the first YaST Firewall has been built ;) Running firewall as user is no security risk, all data is available on the system for everybody.

Sorry, I'll have to close it as duplicate (thanks Michael), I've found the same behavior in dns-server, dhcp-server, users, ldap-client, autoyast... so I guess it really behaves all the same.

If you still feel that 'running YaST module as normal user' should throw warning that this is read-only mode, please, define a behavior and create a feature request in FaTE for 10.2 and/or later. Thanks.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 159375 ***
Comment 6 Gerald Pfeifer 2006-03-21 21:07:13 UTC
It's not only read-only mode, it's worse, so I am reopening this.

For example, when you start the firewall module, it indicates that
the firewall is not running (though it is), thus displaying incorrect
information.

I see two options: either refuse to start the firewall module when
not running as root, or issue a warning are in read-only mode, that
some of the information displayed may not be correct, and some of
the actions the users chooses may fail.

Personally, I guess I'd prefer the former.
Comment 7 Lukas Ocilka 2006-03-22 07:28:23 UTC
Hmm, you're right that the module presents incorrect information. It comes from the simple fact - user doesn't have pesmissions to call the init script to check the service status.

However, the issue "not enough permissions to check the service" applies also to "dns-server", "dhcp-server" and maybe others (where you can start/stop the service).
And the issue of not enough permissions for to set up / check 'firewall' applies to all YaST modules that use the firewall (That small firewall checkbox, additionally with [Details] button).

I guess this should be decided in general. So -> needinfo 'visnov' (sorry Stano).
Comment 8 Stanislav Visnovsky 2006-03-22 08:19:15 UTC
Any such module can use Confirm::MustBeRoot() to present a popup to inform
the user.
Comment 9 Lukas Ocilka 2006-03-22 21:19:57 UTC
Let's change this bug -> Major
It might be fixed tomorrow... oh, it already IS tomorrow :)!
Comment 11 Lukas Ocilka 2006-03-23 08:20:12 UTC
These modules were fixed:
  * yast2-firewall
  * yast2-ntp-client
  * yast2-dhcp-server
  * yast2-ntp-server
  * yast2-runlevel

mail on yast2-hacker to fix other modules will follow...
Comment 12 Jiří Suchomel 2006-03-27 08:35:01 UTC
+ done:

yast2-nis-client
yast2-nis-server