run_kannel_box - forcing umask to be 077

Hi All,

We're been on stock standard debian kannel installs for awhile now so 
it's simply a matter of using kannel out of the box these days which is 
great.

However we've had an ongoing annoyance running kannel on servers which 
we don't maintain. I won't go into the annoying details of why but the 
long and short of it is that we have to do some user hopping to tail the 
logs (you have to be able to become the kannel user or root to view the 
logs, group access is not enough).

The log permissons seem to be set in run_kannel_box (which is used by 
default), it hard wires the umask (overriding anything set in an init.d 
script or login.defs, etc) to be 077.  My belief here is that this sort 
of thing is an installation / configuration setting and shouldn't be 
dictated in code. But better managed in (for example) postinstall 
scripts and umask setting, etc. Thus making it configurable to 
individual requirements, server set-up, etc.

Consider the default debian policy (for better or worse) is 022 but the 
kannel user gets added with the group 'nogroup' and then finally the 
umask is set to 077 by run_kannel_box for the running boxes. Would it 
not make more sense / be simpler / more configurable to be kannel.adm 
with an init.d umask setting to 077 (or 027). Note the logrotate script 
sets the rotated logs to kannel.adm with mode 640.

Ultimately I guess I'm asking if anyone would object if this enforcing 
was removed in an upstream release? All thoughts, comments, etc 
welcome/appreciated.

Consider (from utils/run_kannel_box.c):

@@ -384,10 +384,6 @@
         atexit(remove_pidfile);
         write_pidfile();

-       /* Set the umask to a known value, rather than inheriting
-        * an unknown one. */
-       umask(077);
-
         /* Leave file descriptors 0, 1, and 2 pointing to harmless
          * places, and close all other file descriptors. */
         rebind_standard_streams();

I am happy to submit some debian patches to get the discussion going also.

Cheers,
Alan

-- 
Alan McNatty
Catalyst IT

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