ppr-list-digest volume 5, number 32, message 1

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From: Ken Tindle <ktindle@uky.edu>
Date: 28 May 2003 18:02:18 -0400
Subject: PPR: RH9 breaks PPR web admin

Well, David, the Perl developers have done it again!  The strong
(-T vs. -t) taint checking will barf /usr/lib/ppr/lib/cgi_run.pl
in the latest release of Red Hat Linux.

We went round with something like this before- stuff like CDPATH
in the environment when Perl 5.6 first appeared.

New in Red Hat Linux 9 is a new rev of Perl, which RH calls out as
5.8.0-88.  Note the "88", which is an RPM build number.

When running cgi-bin/show_queues.cgi, you are able to choose
"Show Queue" from the popup menu of a print queue.  You can
see all jobs pending.  If you would select a job, then click
"Release" or "Cancel", you would see:

ppop not ready

insecure dependency in exec while running with -T switch at
/usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0/IPC/Open3.pm line 230

Red Hat is using the IPC::Open3 v1.0104 module for exec now.

If you click the "Modify" button, then the "Log" tab, you note
that the same error as above is logged, but it is actually
lib/cgi_run.pl barfing on line 128.  This line is the actual
exec statement, of course.

/usr/bin/ppop is actually a sym link to the real ELF32
executable file.  Could it be that Perl no longer enjoys
exec on a sym link?

I note that the lower case -t switch is around now.  Haven't
tried this yet.  It is 'relaxed' taint checking.

Note that pulling the -T switch off of the server itself has
no effect on this.  ppr-httpd still works with -T!  But cgi
stuff written in Perl that calls ppop or ppad WILL blow up
on Red Hat Linux 9.

It wasn't enough to take the taint switch off the she-bang
line on every script that had a 'require cgi_run' statement.
I had to pull the -T off ALL the files in /usr/lib/ppr/cgi-bin
to restore operation.

I'm not enough of a "Perl guy" to know why IPC is pissed.
But it's a problem.

Cheers.