Two pf questions

[Wayne Sierke]

On Tue, 2017-03-28 at 20:29 +0200, Ralf Mardorf via freebsd-questions
wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> while I won't add such an exit status loop as I mentioned by an earlier
> reply, I still would be careful with file names in /tmp and also
> consider to make the commands of a "command chain" conditional of the
> preceding commands.
> 
> Instead of
> 
>   cp /etc/pf/bruteforce /tmp/foobar.txt
>   pfctl -t bruteforce -T show >> /tmp/foobar.txt
>   sort -u -n /tmp/foobar.txt > /etc/pf/bruteforce
> 
> I would use something similar to
> 
>   tmp_suffix="-$$-$(mcookie)"
>   cp /etc/pf/bruteforce /tmp/bruteforce$tmp_suffix && \
>   pfctl -t bruteforce -T show >> /tmp/bruteforce$tmp_suffix && \
>   sort -u -n /tmp/bruteforce$tmp_suffix > /etc/pf/bruteforce
> 
> I wouldn't use $$ and $(mcookie) together, perhaps just $(mcookie) or $$
> plus the date and time including seconds or something else unique or
> at least add "$(id -u)" to the PID. "-$$-$(mcookie)" is just an example,
> as "foobar.txt" was just an example, too.
> 
> Regards,
> Ralf

Is there any reason that mktemp(1) is not adequate here, or not
desireable?

Perhaps this:

bf_temp=`mktemp -t bruteforce.`
cp /etc/pf/bruteforce ${bf_temp} ...
etc.