Bug 1575352

Summary:	mock --version requires administrative privileges
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	Georg Sauthoff <fedora>
Component:	mock	Assignee:	Miroslav Suchý <msuchy>
Status:	CLOSED WONTFIX	QA Contact:	Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity:	unspecified	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	27	CC:	jdisnard, jkeating, mebrown, msimacek, msuchy, praiskup, williams
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Last Closed:	2018-05-09 07:49:50 UTC	Type:	Bug
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Description Georg Sauthoff 2018-05-06 08:23:56 UTC

Description of problem:
Invoking a simple `mock --version` command yields a root password prompt, if your user isn't in the 'mock' group.

Sure, one can work around this via `rpm -q mock`. But this also breaks fedora-review which unconditionally calls `mock --version` even if it doesn't need to use mock - e.g. with `fedora-review --help`, `fedora-review --version` or `fedora-review --prebuilt ...`.

One could argue that fedora-review should be fixed instead but requiring root for displaying the version string is just the most surprising thing and thus clearly violates the principle of least astonishment. See also https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=366711#c3 for another surprised user.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
mock-1.4.9-1.fc27.noarch

How reproducible:
always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. make sure that your user isn't a member of the 'mock' group
2. mock --version
3.

Actual results:
You are attempting to run "mock" which requires administrative
privileges, but more information is needed in order to do so.
Authenticating as "root"
Password:

Expected results:
The trivial output of the version number.

Additional info:

Comment 1 Miroslav Suchý 2018-05-09 07:49:50 UTC

This will be very complicated to implement. The checking of privilege is done consolehelper before mock is actually executed. So I cannot really done there some "if args[0] == '--version' then do not ask for root"

If fedora-review needs this (and do not want to run 'rpm -q' for some reason') you can run:
  /usr/libexec/mock/mock --version
This executable is run by consolehelper itself and does not check for the root.