<div dir="ltr"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">2008/8/1 Eben Eliason <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:eben.eliason@gmail.com">eben.eliason@gmail.com</a>></span><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div dir="ltr"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div><div></div><div class="Wj3C7c">On Fri, Aug 1, 2008 at 4:07 PM, John Gilmore <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:gnu@toad.com" target="_blank">gnu@toad.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div>> Why does it matter that you cannot adjust the screen brightness from<br>
> the console using the special keys? You can adjust it from Sugar<br>
> without root access. The idea was to understand what limits we'd face<br>
> using the console for root access instead of a special terminal<br>
> activity. What are the Sugar/X Window actions that require root<br>
> access?<br>
<br>
</div>"It doesn't matter if you have to abandon Sugar to do system<br>
administration or to recover from a problem?" Walter, I'm shocked; I<br>
would've expected you to be arguing on the other side: "Sugar should<br>
be the preferred environment." That we shouldn't be kicking people<br>
out of Sugar, particularly when their system is fragile and in need of<br>
diagnosis, repair, or upgrade. We should keep them in the environment<br>
they know and understand, where the Frame works, the controls work,<br>
the tabs work the same way, the keyboard keys all do the same things.<br>
<br>
It was hard for the Support Gang to explain to people how to become<br>
root so they could diagnose or fix something they reported as a<br>
problem (like a full filesystem, a USB key that didn't work, ...).<br>
OLPC was also changing the way you become root (su versus sudo) in<br>
different software releases, based on Fedora changes. We hashed all<br>
this out in January, and the Terminal got a new "#" button at the top,<br>
which injects the right command to make you root. There's no such<br>
button in the console. If we push people back to the console, the<br>
support load increases. It's easier to get them to run the Terminal<br>
applic...uh, activity, and press the root button, and type this<br>
command. Also, in Terminal, cut and paste works to send us back<br>
diagnostic results via Browse.<br>
<br>
The owners of free software based machines also need the ability to<br>
inspect and revise the free software in those machines -- or it isn't<br>
free as in freedom. Legally, OLPC can push that ability out to the<br>
very corners of the system (e.g. "You can't do that in Sugar."). But<br>
morally and philosophically, we ought to be pulling it right into the<br>
heart of the system ("Of course you can, and it's so easy; here, let<br>
me show you!").<br></blockquote><div><br></div></div></div><div>I agree with everything said above. </div><div class="Ih2E3d"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<br>
Let's not lose sight of what's going on here. The whole reason we are<br>
having this discussion at all is because of OLPC's "security" model<br>
(Bitfrost). If the security model doesn't permit integrated,<br>
interactive root access that lets people diagnose, repair,<br>
investigate, and alter their systems, there's something wrong with the<br>
security model -- not something wrong with root access.<br></blockquote><div><br></div></div><div>And I wonder if it could really be so simple. Is it possible that we could simply have a P_ROOT permission as well, or does that blow Bitfrost out of the water? In a way I'd hope not, since the whole point is that the desire for root is requested/advertised, and therefore can (eventually) be denied; P_ROOT clearly wouldn't be granted within the default permissions either, once we have them.</div>
<div><br>
</div></div></div></blockquote><div> <br>Coincidentally, I have a patch which does just that! See my thread on sugar@... OK, I guess I should copy it to devel@ and security@ while I'm at it.<br><br> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_quote"><div>I write this assuming that this might not help matters at all...it could be too lenient. But perhaps we could offer the P_ROOT only to activities which a) request it and b) are signed by some signing authority (could be us, could be a country, etc.), where the security section of the control panel offers a place to designate trusted signing authorities. I'm no security guru, though, which I willingly admit! Is anything I've mentioned worth even considering?</div>
</div></div></blockquote><div><br>Once we have activity signatures, we can talk about this more concretely. I expect that, for general bitfrost permissions, there will be a bitfrost control panel that allows you to grant certain permissions to a specific (hashed version of an) activity; or to delegate the power to grant certain permissions to other signers (such as the author of an activity, so that updates get same permissions). I think that it is reasonable to put additional restrictions on the P_ROOT permission: perhaps it can ONLY be granted to activities installed at build time OR signed by current XO? (Then, to change the version of your terminal, you'd either have to do a full update to a new build, or touch the new version of terminal activity with Develop to "make it yours").<br>
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