Bug 3891

Summary: General: packages should not write into /home
Product: [Retired] Red Hat Linux Reporter: chris
Component: mod_php3Assignee: Preston Brown <pbrown>
Status: CLOSED DEFERRED QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: low    
Version: 6.0   
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
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Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 1999-09-05 17:52:56 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description chris 1999-07-03 22:50:46 UTC 
Many sites (i.e., ours :-) use NIS and the automounter to
mount home directories on demand.  However, files installed
in /home become hidden when the automounter takes control of
/home.  RPM upgrades also fail miserably when they want to
write into /home for obvious reasons.  Workaround
suggestions appreciated.  Offensive RPMS:

foreach f (i386/RedHat/RPMS/*.rpm updates/i386/RPMS/*.rpm)
  rpm -qlp $f | egrep '^/home/' > /dev/null && echo $f:t
end
anonftp-2.8-1.i386.rpm
apache-1.3.6-7.i386.rpm
mod_perl-1.19-2.i386.rpm
samba-2.0.3-8.i386.rpm
squid-2.2.STABLE1-1.i386.rpm
mod_php3-3.0.9-1.i386.rpm
mod_php3-manual-3.0.9-1.i386.rpm

[Interesting technical quirk: replacing the above egrep with
"egrep -q '^/home/' && echo $f:t" lists only anonftp,
mod_perl, and mod_php3 RPMS - not the others.]
Comment 1 Preston Brown 1999-07-06 15:31:59 UTC 
While I agree with this opinion (and always have), I'm not sure how
easy it will be to move away from the /home -based locations at this
point -- upgrades could be *extremely* painful.  This is one we have
to discuss.
Comment 2 Jeff Johnson 1999-09-05 17:52:59 UTC 
As an alternative, rpm has netsharedpaths -- paths on which files
will not be installed. Try
	echo "%_netsharedpath	/home" >> /etc/rpm/macros
The macro _netsharedpath takes a colon separated list of paths to
ignore as values, so add to the definition as desired. You will
also need to reinstall any packages that install files on netshared
paths after configuring.

I'm preserving this bug by resloving to the REMIND state.

Caveat Emptor: It's up to you to populate netshared paths
appropriately.