[tex-live] strange changing permissions

[George N. White III]

On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 12:42 PM, Victor Ivrii <vivrii at gmail.com> wrote:

> It is not TeXLive utility (as it is on linux). In fact on Mac I always
> maintain TL via sudo (as a root) and never had such problems
>
> I changed umask to 022

The problem on Mac comes when you have multiple users.  User A
is at the console doing some big job with a GUI application, user B
logs in via ssh and needs some change.    TeX Live is too complex
to be trusted, so we want to avoid doing TL admin as root.   Also,
one of the points of sudo on multi-user systems is that you can
go the logs and figure out who and when the command that broke
something was run.  If every package needs sudo for all admin,
then sudo becomes pointless.

If we keep TL under a normal user ownership, console users with
admin rights can still do TL admin as on a personal Mac, we just have
to revert ownership (using sudo) before doing tladmin.  Running one
"chown" is a small fraction of the potential for damage that you could
get from a bug or intentional hack in one of the many TL admin tools.



>
> Thanks
>
> Victor
> --
> ========================
> Victor Ivrii, Professor, Department of Mathematics, University of Toronto
> http://www.math.toronto.edu/ivrii
>



-- 
George N. White III <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia