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

[Petr Viktorin]

On 05/14/2012 04:00 PM, Rob Crittenden wrote:
> 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.
>>
>> Martin
>>
>
> I think those are there so they don't show up for the -mod command since
> we have a separate interface for doing it.
>
> rob

For that purpose, would a no_cli flag be better than no_create+no_update?


I found one more no_update attribute that might be useful with 
--setattr: externalhost.

-- 
Petr³