Re: system/1561: cap_mkdb is badly broken

["Todd C. Miller" <Todd.Miller@courtesan.com>]

The following reply was made to PR system/1561; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: "Todd C. Miller" <Todd.Miller@courtesan.com>
To: =?iso-8859-1?Q?R=E9mi_Guyomarch?= <rguyom@pobox.com>
Cc: gnats@openbsd.org
Subject: Re: system/1561: cap_mkdb is badly broken 
Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2000 11:27:42 -0700

 The problem is that since cap_mkdb uses the getcap(3) routines
 itself when you build a .db version of a file "/etc/foo" with the
 destination as /etc/foo.db you end up creating an empty .db file
 *before* cap_mkdb does any work.  Thus, when it looks for records
 in the file it doesn't find any.
 
 In short, cap_mkdb was not intended to be used as you are using it,
 though it certainly could be made to do so.  The simplest way to
 do so would be to add a function to getcap(3) that disables reading
 of .db files so as to force the use of the text version only.
 
  - todd