[Freeipa-devel] [RANT] --setattr validation is a minefield.

[Martin Kosek]

On Mon, 2012-05-14 at 09:36 +0200, Martin Kosek wrote:
> On Thu, 2012-05-10 at 15:19 +0200, Petr Viktorin wrote:
> > On 04/10/2012 07:53 PM, Martin Kosek wrote:
> > > On Tue, 2012-04-10 at 19:25 +0200, Petr Viktorin wrote:
> > >> On 04/10/2012 07:07 PM, Martin Kosek wrote:
> > >>> On Tue, 2012-04-10 at 17:03 +0200, Jan Cholasta wrote:
> > >>>> On 10.4.2012 16:00, Petr Viktorin wrote:
> > > [snip]
> > >>>> Like you said above, we should either not validate --{set,add,del}attr
> > >>>> or don't allow them on known attributes.
> > >>>
> > >>> IMHO, validating attributes we manage in the same way for both --setattr
> > >>> and standard attrs is not that wrong. It is a good precaution, because
> > >>> if we let an unvalidated value in, it can make even a bigger mess later
> > >>> in our pre_callbacks or post_callbacks where we assume that at this
> > >>> point everything is valid.
> > >>
> > >> Then we should validate *exactly* the same way, including not allowing
> > >> no_update attributes to be updated.
> > >
> > > That makes some sense, I could agree with that.
> > >
> > 
> > Now that I have a ticket on this 
> > (https://fedorahosted.org/freeipa/ticket/2580), I would like to get some 
> > wider agreement here.
> > 
> > The no_update/no_create attributes are mainly "enabled" flags 
> > (ipaenabledflag, nsaccountlock, idnszoneactive), administrative 
> > (krbprincipalname, ipauniqueid, ipacertificatesubjectbase), DNS record 
> > type and data, and various virtual attributes.
> > 
> > If setattr etc. is disabled for all of these, it will mainly matter for 
> > the "enabled" flags. To be honest I don't know why we only allow 
> > modifying those through special commands.
> > If there's some security reason for that, then setattr etc. should be 
> > disabled for them; otherwise I think they should be changeable through 
> > xyz-mod.
> 
> I am not aware of any security reasons why we use special commands for
> enabling/disabling objects. I assume this is to make it different from
> standard object attribute changes and make sure that user does not
> disable the object "by accident" when doing a mod operation. Rob, maybe
> you remember the reason for this interface....
> 
> But since we already have this approach, we should keep it and implement
> missing "xyz-enable" and "xyz-disable" command so that user's using
> *attr interface to play with enabled/disabled attributes can switch to
> the specialized commands.
> 
> So far, I noticed that only DNS zone object misses the enable/disable
> commands, I created a ticket to fix that:
> 
> https://fedorahosted.org/freeipa/ticket/2754
> 
> > Either way, setattr etc. should honor the no_update flags. Any objections?
> > 
> 
> Nope - as long as ticket 2754 is fixed.
> 

I just noticed we have the enable/disable command for DNS zone as well,
I somehow managed to overlook it... Sorry for noise, closing the ticket
2754.

Martin