Re: Why is /usr/include matched with /usr/inclu.e?

On Wed, Aug 21, 2019 at 10:02 PM Dominick Grift <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Aug 21, 2019 at 09:57:14PM +0200, Nicolas Iooss wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > While checking the patterns in refpolicy, I stumbled upon the
> > following line in
> > https://github.com/SELinuxProject/refpolicy/blob/RELEASE_2_20190609/policy/modules/kernel/files.fc#L200
> >
> > /usr/inclu.e(/.*)? gen_context(system_u:object_r:usr_t,s0)
>
> Probably to work around an m4-ism. There seems to be an m4 "include" built-in.

This seems to be a good explanation. The policy also uses workarounds
for "index" built-in, with:

/etc/amanda/.*/index`'(/.*)?
/var/lib/apt-xapian-inde(x)(/.*)?

In order not to introduce parentheses (which might change some
ordering in the way the paths are matched with the patterns), I am
thinking of replacing the pattern of /usr/include with:

/usr/includ[e](/.*)? gen_context(system_u:object_r:usr_t,s0)

... with a comment about working around a m4 issue.

Thanks,
Nicolas

> >
> > This pattern matches /usr/include and its content, but why is a dot
> > used? Which other directories can it match?
> >
> > The issue there is that a dot can match a slash, so the pattern also
> > matches /usr/inclu/e/, which seems strange. This pattern has been
> > introduced in the very early days of refpolicy's git repository,
> > according to https://github.com/SELinuxProject/refpolicy/commit/f8ec0ad43b54437e2d9f0e48a773a64dbd9e543c#diff-e333cb52d2139f7a71f0dfbd32c06f70R117.
> > Does anyone remember why the pattern for /usr/include is so special?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Nicolas
> >
>
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> Dominick Grift