I'm starting out with Rails on a Linux platform. How much of my development should be done as root? Should I be worried about permissions issues down the road, or just go on happily doing everything as root on my development machine?
Thanks, Brian
Brian wrote:
I'm starting out with Rails on a Linux platform. How much of my development should be done as root?
Almost none. To install you will occassionally 'sudo gem install ...'.
Should I be worried about permissions issues down the road, or just go on happily doing everything as root on my development machine?
That's a Linux FAQ; modern Linux goes a long way towards discouraging flight-time as root, and towards helping you not need to.
The general rule of thumb is this: Imagine if your Linux box actually had multiple concurrent users. (It has far greater potential for them than WinXP does, for example.) Anything you do that could affect them (except trivial things like mount a CD-ROM), you should do as root. Because installing software affects them, you should sudo to install.
Do everything else as a normal user. If you don't upgrade Rails or Gems, you can work on any aspect of your development website as a normal user.
(After you are _proficient_ with sudo, you can get into /etc/sudoers and remove the password requirement. That's only if you understand the implications!)
Modern Linux discourages running as root because you might accidentally overwrite a system file and leave the computer open to others. Or lock you out.
Brian said the following on 02/11/2007 10:22 PM:
I'm starting out with Rails on a Linux platform. How much of my development should be done as root? Should I be worried about permissions issues down the road, or just go on happily doing everything as root on my development machine?
Please do not do ANYTHING except install and administer the machine using root.
One of the evils of doing things with elevated privilege is that your applications end up needing it, which is a Bad Thing(tm).
So that malware that might target me while reading mail or browsing the web - since, remember, there is now malware that doesn't need you to 'accept' or run it - cannot affect more than a restricted space, I never run with elevated privilege except when doing maintenance.
However many ignorant application designers DO write code that HAS to be run as admin. Windows developers seem particularly prone to this, and its very difficult to explain to them that this shouldn't be the case,
The reality is that XP and earlier don't come shipped with 'admin plus other', as will Vista - which is catching up with where *NIX was about 10 years ago, according to the presentation I attended last week - so many small developers don't bother setting up non-admin accounts.
When I audit - that's my profession - corporate sites, I find they get it right. The cubicle worker's machine is set up so that they don't have admin privileges. But what the heck, they're not developers.
Too many developers seem to think -erroneously - that they need God-like powers in order to get their job done. Not so.
Strictly speaking, you don't even need to be root to install ruby, rails and gems. The site where I host my Typo-based blog didn't have ruby 1.8.4 or rails or gems. I created local $HOME/bin, $HOME/lib and $HOME/.gem, downloaded and compiled a local version of ruby 1.8.4, installed local gem, downloaded local gem packages and rails ... and I was up an running.
I did all this WITHOUT being root - the ISP would have been outrageously stupid if they were to allow customers to have root access! You can set up your machine like this too - its much safer to not be able to wipe out the machine with a small error
There is no reason whatsoever you should develop under root, and doing so may expose you and your application to risks. I can imagine a few, both 'accidents' and 'targeted'.
There's no reason you should EVER log in as root once the machine is installed[1]. You can treat it, for the most part, like an ISP account. In fact you should set up your machine so that * you can only log in as root from the text-mode console * you can't log in as root from the GUI - EVER
I then go a bit further. Only a designated administration account can SU to root, and that account is only used for administering the machine.
Everything else is done with SUDO rather than SU, for a couple of reasons. * using SU you can forget to drop privilege and go on to make mistakes * using SUDO makes you think about which accounts should be allowed to do what (and when and why)
SU, by the way, is roughly similar to XP's "runas".
By analogy: you don't give users unrestricted access to every method and direct access to the database in a Rails application. That's what root amounts to. only scaled up to the machine.
[1] Other *NIX users will disagree with me here. but the reality is that if you are enough of a newb to Linux to ask this question then most of the reasons you might need root, pouring over system logs, hacking system files, are probably outside you experience and needs. You might as well be running from a "LiveCD" except for your development area.
If you need to do 'system stuff' the GUI menu item run in non-privileged mode for it will ask you the root password and behave much like SUDO, executing that one command. Since you aren't familiar with Linux, this is safer than hacking the system files directly or using the command line.
If you want to become familiar with Linux "innards" rather than just use it as a development platform, then go ahead, but don't do it on the box you are using for production. Treat it as a 'scratch monkey' box, that can be wiped out without loss.
Anton Aylward wrote:
When I audit - that's my profession - corporate sites, I find they get it right. The cubicle worker's machine is set up so that they don't have admin privileges. But what the heck, they're not developers.
Too many developers seem to think -erroneously - that they need God-like powers in order to get their job done. Not so.
So if I can't explain to my 11yo rugrat why she shouldn't click on every gawd-damned thing that says "download me!", beginning with Yahoo's crap, then I can at least go to the Windows XP Users control panel applet and switch her account to non-admin, right?
Noope! She can apparently still download them. Give me a reason not to Linucize this cess-pool? Oh, we wouldn't be able to watch TV on it then?!
sigh<
[1] Other *NIX users will disagree with me here. but the reality is that if you are enough of a newb to Linux to ask this question then most of the reasons you might need root, pouring over system logs, hacking system files, are probably outside you experience and needs. You might as well be running from a "LiveCD" except for your development area.
Oh, and I don't have enough trouble already getting stuff to install and integrate correctly to either /usr/ or /usr/local?
Phlip said the following on 02/12/2007 12:32 PM:
So if I can't explain to my 11yo rugrat why she shouldn't click on every gawd-damned thing that says "download me!", beginning with Yahoo's crap, then I can at least go to the Windows XP Users control panel applet and switch her account to non-admin, right?
Noope! She can apparently still download them. Give me a reason not to Linucize this cess-pool? Oh, we wouldn't be able to watch TV on it then?!
Have you actually tried that?
Windows/XP/SP2 - set up an account that does have admin.
Now log in to it and go to ... say OpenOffice.Org and download their installer.
Now try running it to install OpenOffice.
The issue isn't downloadng. Its INSTALLING.
Some nasty stuff out there tries to install automatically or to trick the user into installing.
Unless you have admin permission you can't install. THAT's the point of not running as admin -- or root.
Phlip said the following on 02/12/2007 12:32 PM:
Oh, and I don't have enough trouble already getting stuff to install and integrate correctly to either /usr/ or /usr/local?
*sigh* How about I trade you some of my UNIX experience for some of your Ruby and Rails experience?
I don't seem to have the problems you describe but flounder like a Coelacanth out of water when it comes to rails. I seem to try everything before getting something to work. If ever.
The sketches on my whiteboard of what the pages _should_ look like are great and the E-R model is fine, but things like the routes and getting the parent-child on the page is defeating me.
"Oh, and don't I have enough trouble ..."
Anton Aylward said the following on 02/12/2007 01:13 PM:
Have you actually tried that?
Windows/XP/SP2 - set up an account that does have admin.
TYPO ALERT *********************************************
Missing "not" Should read: set up an account that does NOT have admin.
Anton Aylward wrote:
TYPO ALERT *********************************************
Missing "not" Should read: set up an account that does NOT have admin.
Sacred cows make the best hamburgers. --Mark Twain
Hmmmm. E. coli!
Thank you all for your insights!
Brian
