Subject: Re: [vserver] [WARNING] rc script might wipe your guests
From: "John Alberts" <john.m.alberts@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 7 Aug 2008 21:12:39 -0500

You're scaring the crap out of me!  Is this specific to a particular
os?  I'm using vserver on RHEL and Gentoo, and I don't see this on any
of my systems.

John


On Thu, Aug 7, 2008 at 8:31 PM, Herbert Poetzl <herbert@13thfloor.at> wrote:
>
> Folks!
> This is a really serious issue!
>
> recent changes to various (sysv)init scripts might
> wipe out your guests and their config on every
> system reboot!
>
> here are the details:
>
> /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit (path might be different)
> contain a line similar to this one:
>
> find -L /var/lock /var/run ! -type d -exec rm -f {} \;
>
> with the purpose to remove old files from
> /var/lock and /var/run (which sounds like a good
> idea, but the devil is in the detail)
>
> now util-vserver uses /var/run/vservers.rev to
> store links to the configured/active guests like
> this:
>
> lrwxrwxrwx  1  19 2008-08-07 14:23 42001 -> /etc/vservers/test1/
> lrwxrwxrwx  1  19 2008-08-07 16:19 42002 -> /etc/vservers/test2/
> lrwxrwxrwx  1  19 2008-08-06 11:50 42003 -> /etc/vservers/test3/
>
> and each guest config, contains a link to the
> actual guest data, like this:
>
> lrwxrwxrwx  1  21 2008-08-07 16:02 vdir -> /vservers/test1
>
> the problem is in the -L, which means that find
> will not only remove all files in /var/run, but
> also follow all symbolic links and remove all files
> there, which will include the guest config and
> more important the actual guest data/files
>
> as Daniel Hokka Zakrisson did put it (quite nicely
> IMHO) on the IRC channel:
>
> "I don't know what kind of crack-rock whoever wrote
>     that smoked, but that's the problem."
>
> HTH,
> Herbert
>
>



-- 
John Alberts