bsdtar's security restrictions (was Re: Spurious EACCES errors from apache)

[Kris Kennaway]

On Sun, Aug 15, 2004 at 02:36:51PM -0700, Matthew Dillon wrote:
> : > This is bad when some of those directories
> :> already exist, because other processes trying to access files in the
> :> directory hierarchy may lose the race and fail.
> :
> :<scratching head>  I don't think I understand what
> :exactly you're trying to do.
> :
> :You are extracting archives over an existing directory
> :that is currently being served by an Apache process in
> :order to refresh some (presumably) small number of files?
> :
> :Give me some more details about your situation and I'll
> :see what I can come up with.
> :
> :Tim
> 
>     Using tar for that sort of thing is a bad idea anyway, since tar (and
>     bsdtar) do not use the create-temporary/write/rename trick to atomically
>     replace files.  This means that a live server like a web server could
>     easily 'catch' files in the middle of being written, leading to odd 
>     errors.

No, my use is safe because I know the clients are not going to request
the files until they're all in place (because of the way jobs are
ordered).

Kris
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