Bug#597166: gnome-user-share: please support symlinks in the ~/Public folder

[Fabian Greffrath]

Am 20.10.2010 00:06, schrieb Josselin Mouette:
> This could be done with the FollowSymLinks option, but my apache-fu is
> not enough to know how it behaves when you enable write permissions in
> this directory. Do you know whether this would make unwanted files
> modifiable remotely?

In the upstream bug report [1] hadess told me:

  Given that the httpd WebDav module ignores symlinks, even if we
  wanted, we couldn't make it work without fixing mod_dav. See the bug
  mentioned above.

And in the "bug mentioned above" [2] an apache dev explains the issue:

  The traditional attitude to this type of issue has been that "the
  DAV repository" includes content which can be managed by mod_dav,
  and that does not include symlinks, so symlinks should not be
  exposed in PROPFIND results. (nor sockets, named pipes, etc)

  Simply saying "respect FollowSymlinks" is not really the whole
  story; we'd still have to decide e.g. how to handle symlinks which
  point outside the DAV repository, if turned off, for example.

  Also note that SymlinksIfOwnersMatch is not a security feature.

So AFAIUI this cannot be done with the FollowSymLinks option as long 
as apache's DAV module ignores symlinks itself. :(

  - Fabian

[1] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=326702
[2] https://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=46521