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

[Rob Crittenden]

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