[Python-Dev] PEP: per user site-packages directory (original) (raw)

Gregory P. Smith greg at krypto.org
Sun Jan 13 20:05:54 CET 2008

On 1/13/08, Christian Heimes <lists at cheimes.de> wrote:

Gregory P. Smith wrote: > My main suggestion was going to be the ability to turn it off as you already > mentioned. However, please consider leaving it off by default to avoid > problems for installed python scripts importing user supplied code. For > shared hosting environments where this becomes really useful users can > easily add the -s (or whatever flag is chosen) to their programs > themselves. I don't know what that'd mean on windows where #! lines don't > exist. Yet another file extension to imply the flag (yuck)? A .cmd wrapper > script to run python with the flag (ugh)? So you prefer to make the per use site-package directory an opt-in option? I prefer it as an opt-out option. It's enabled by default, unless the user disables the feature with -s. I'm not sure how to solve the problem on Windows. IMHO the feature should be enabled on Windows at least but I like to keep it enabled on all systems. The PEP doesn't add a new attack vector. The problem also exist with PYTHONPATH. Paranoid programs should start with -E -s anyway and paranoid system administrators can switch a flag in site.py:

Good point, leave it on by default.

Enable per user site-packages directory

# set it to False to disable the feature or True to force the feature ENABLEUSERSITE = None

If we disable the feature by default it won't be available for a lot of users. > For security reasons we also need it disabled when the getuid() != geteuid() > to avoid user supplied code being executed as another user. Defaulting to > disabled would mean that security could be left up to the end user to mess > up. (many systems do not allow setuid #! scripts but this issue would still > apply to things run under sudo) It sounds like a reasonable and easy implementable idea, at least on Unix. Windows doesn't have getuid() and geteuid(). On the other hand Windows doesn't have the suid bit, too. I also tried to check if os.stat(main.file).stuid == os.getuid() but the real main is not available in site.py. It's loaded and assigned much later.

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