[Aptitude-devel] Bug#626459: Please provide an option to run a shell

[Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo]

Control: tags -1 + wontfix
Control: close -1


Hi Josh,

2011-05-12 07:45 Josh Triplett:
>Package: aptitude
>Severity: wishlist
>
>I just hit bug 626447 during an upgrade started from aptitude, and as a
>result I could no longer run any binaries on the system.  I had a
>handful of running user shells, but no root shells to fix the problem.
>I did have aptitude running as root, but after much investigation I
>found that aptitude had no option to execute a shell.
>
>Please consider adding an option to execute a shell.  Please also
>consider making the shell command to execute configurable through
>the preferences GUI, which would have allowed me to set it to
>"/lib/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 /bin/sh". :)
>
>Under normal circumstances (when system binaries can actually run), a
>running aptitude provides root-equivalent access anyway by various means
>(for instance, the conffile prompt); thus, this option would not incur
>any additional security implications.  Providing this option would offer
>one more tool to help recover a hosed system, in case the user forgot to
>have a root shell running during the upgrade.

I don't think that it is a good idea to implement this.  Even the
"simple" ability to spawn a shell suddenly requires config options,
taking care of variables that we export or might override (e.g. we
sometimes change LC_ALL), documentation in several places,
translations...

This would be useful only once in very exceptional circumstances like
the ones that you mention, and only when you do have aptitude running as
root, happen to know that aptitude has that capability, and are able to
realise in time for how to fix the problem.

For any other circumstance, even if it was possible to spawn shells from
aptitude, one is much better off getting a shell by other means.

So 5 years after and with no intention to implement this, I am closing
this request.


Cheers.
-- 
Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo <manuel.montezelo at gmail.com>