Subject: RE: [PATCH] setup: support GIT_IGNORE_INSECURE_OWNER environment variable

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2024 11:19:04 -0400

On Wednesday, June 26, 2024 9:12 AM, Phillip Wood wrote:
>On 26/06/2024 13:33, Florian Schmaus wrote:
>> Sometimes more flexibility to disable/ignore the ownership check,
>> besides the safe.directory configuration option, is required.
>>
>> For example, git-daemon running as nobody user, which typically has no
>> home directory. Therefore, we can not add the path to a user-global
>> configuration and adding the path to the system-wide configuration
>> could have negative security implications.
>>
>> Therefore, make the check configurable via an environment variable.
>
>An alternative would be to allow safe.directory to be specified on the command line
>with "git -c safe.directory='*' daemon ..." rather than adding a dedicated
>environment variable. Or you could set $HOME to a suitable directory when
>running "git daemon" and put the user-global config file there. That directory and
>config file only need to be readable by the user that "git daemon" is running under it
>can be owned by root or whoever else you want.

I agree with this alternative. Our CI build environment already has so many environment variables (not just from git but all dependencies and the CI environment itself) that we are pushing the 56Kb platform limit (not kidding). Reducing dependence on environment variables is, in my opinion, a good and necessary thing.

>> If the environment variable GIT_IGNORE_INSECURE_OWNER is set to true,
>> then ignore potentially insecure ownership of git-related path
>> components.
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Florian Schmaus <[email-masked]>
>> ---
>>   setup.c | 8 ++++++++
>>   1 file changed, 8 insertions(+)
>>
>> diff --git a/setup.c b/setup.c
>> index 3afa6fb09b28..da3f504fb536 100644
>> --- a/setup.c
>> +++ b/setup.c
>> @@ -1278,6 +1278,14 @@ static int ensure_valid_ownership(const char *gitfile,
>>   	 */
>>   	git_protected_config(safe_directory_cb, &data);
>>
>> +	if (data.is_safe)
>> +		return data.is_safe;
>> +
>> +	if (git_env_bool("GIT_IGNORE_INSECURE_OWNER", 0)) {
>> +		warning("ignoring dubious ownership in repository at '%s'
>(GIT_IGNORE_INSECURE_OWNER set)", data.path);
>> +		return 1;
>> +	}
>> +
>>   	return data.is_safe;
>>   }
>>

Sincerely
--Randall