rtools were deemed almost unused 15 years ago...

[Michael Gmelin]

> On 20. Jun 2017, at 22:16, Slawa Olhovchenkov <slw at zxy.spb.ru> wrote:
> 
>> On Tue, Jun 20, 2017 at 08:22:17PM +0200, Emmanuel Vadot wrote:
>> 
>> On Tue, 20 Jun 2017 19:17:44 +0200
>> Joel Dahl <joel at vnode.se> wrote:
>> 
>>>> On Tue, Jun 20, 2017 at 03:59:54PM +0200, Michael Gmelin wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On Tue, 20 Jun 2017 13:11:37 +0200
>>>> Baptiste Daroussin <bapt at FreeBSD.org> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>>> On Tue, Jun 20, 2017 at 12:25:46PM +0200, Jeremie Le Hen wrote:
>>>>>> Hey folks,
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I remember when I was still barely out of my teenagehood, people
>>>>>> were mostly using ssh/scp while rtools (rsh, rlogin, ... for the
>>>>>> youngsters) were left in place as a courtesy for legacy production
>>>>>> systems still relying it on them.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Fast forward to 2017 (so yes, 15 years later), stack-clash [1]
>>>>>> sorely reminds us that suid binaries are an attack surface. I don't
>>>>>> even need to mention that it's a healthy engineering practice to
>>>>>> remove unused code, both from a maintenance and security
>>>>>> perspective.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Therefore, I hereby propose to remove rtools from the base system.
>>>>>> I acknowledge this will likely cause troubles for a handful of
>>>>>> people who are still relying on it for good or bad reasons. But the
>>>>>> flipside is that the attack surface of millions of FreeBSD
>>>>>> installed out there will be reduced.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> The proposed roadmap is:
>>>>>> - disable from the build on head and let it soak for one month
>>>>>> - remove rtools from the base.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> What do you guys think?  Any preferred color for the bikeshed? :)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> [1] https://www.qualys.com/2017/06/19/stack-clash/stack-clash.txt  
>>>>> 
>>>>> Yeah!
>>>>> 
>>>>> Is telnetd part of your list?
>>>> 
>>>> As long as the telnet(1) client stays in I'm all for it.
>>> 
>>> +1. Please keep the telnet client. It's something I expect be part of the base
>>> system utilities. I use it all the time.
>>> 
>>> -- 
>>> Joel
>> 
>> Time to learn nc(1), I'm still fighting to use nc(1) insteal of telnet
>> (1) because of musle memory but removing it will help me make the
>> switch.
>> 
>> I honestly don't see any valid reason to keep telnet in the tree.
> 
> Don't talk what we need to learn, please.
> 
> PS: nc don't emulate telnet protocol.

I use nc every day (more frequently than telnet for sure), but it serves a different purpose than telnet. I need both.

-m