cgit and symlinks

[dlcampbell at gmx.com (Daniel Campbell)]

On 03/12/2017 07:18 AM, John Keeping wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 09, 2017 at 08:58:43AM +0100, MonkZ wrote:
>> Am 09.03.2017 um 01:15 schrieb John Keeping:
>>> On Wed, Mar 08, 2017 at 02:28:11PM +0100, MonkZ wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Am 08.03.2017 um 13:30 schrieb John Keeping:
>>>>> On Wed, Mar 08, 2017 at 12:38:38PM +0100, MonkZ wrote:
>>>>>> Am 07.03.2017 um 00:35 schrieb John Keeping:
>>>>>>> We can't reliably follow the link because there is no guarantee that the
>>>>>>> target lies within the repository and I don't know what we would output
>>>>>>> for the case where we can't display the target.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> INADH (I'm not a dev here)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I would recommend to continue ignoring it or returning the blob, because
>>>>>> following symlinks (internally) might result -  if not done carefully -
>>>>>> in directory traversal security issues. Maybe resolving a symlink to a
>>>>>> HTTP301 could work.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> For the UI there might be a html-link (in a notification box "This is a
>>>>>> symlink that points to ...") to the symlink-destination below or above
>>>>>> the blob, to get a user via click to a file/directory.
>>>>>
>>>>> We're talking about the "plain" UI here (for example [0]), so we don't
>>>>> have anywhere to put additional content and it has to be something
>>>>> basic.
>>>> Of course. It would be handled like a content-rewrite to return a http301.
>>>>
>>>> Pseudocode:
>>>> handle_symlinks = True # new config item
>>>> if this_file_is_a_symlink and symlink_is_relative and handle_symlinks:
>>>> 	if plain_ui:
>>>> 		# rewrite blob to http301
>>>> 		# by attaching the path to the end of current basedir
>>>> 		# cgit is already able to handle ../ in a path
>>>> 	if !plain_ui:
>>>> 		# show blob
>>>> 		# show notification that this is a symlink
>>>> 		# show a link to a url
>>>> 		# 	like the one that would be used in plain_ui
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm not actually too worried about directory traversal if we were to try
>>>>> following links because we're looking things up in a Git tree at a
>>>>> particular commit and not on the filesystem.  A bigger concern would be
>>>>> whether the internals of Git do anything bad (like invalid memory
>>>>> access) if we give the tree traversal machinery a path that goes up out
>>>>> of the repository; I doubt it but I have not checked.
>>>> If we use url-rewrites (and let the http-client care about getting the
>>>> correct file or directory), this would be a non-issue.
>>>
>>> It could also mean that cross-repository symlinks work if the server
>>> layout matches that that is expected for checkouts of the repositories.
>>>
>>> But it's not exactly helpful if a repository contains an absolute
>>> symlink and I don't think we want to start figuring out whether a
>>> redirect makes sense - what do we do if we decide it doesn't?
>>>
>>
>> Absolute symlinks must be ignored. There is no deterministic way to
>> resolve them - every clone can be at a different location, and there
>> isn't really a deterministic mapping from url to filesystem. Absolute
>> symlinks would only work if resolved internally - with additional
>> security risks.
>>
>> Relative inter-repository links may allowed/handled/redirected if
>> explicitly configured, otherwise it might be confusing if the server
>> layout doesn't match. On the other hand a notification "This is a
>> symlink outside this repository" might suffice (but i don't have a plan
>> for plain-ui).
>
> We can consider improvements to the tree UI separately, but I really
> don't think we should be getting into anything clever with symlinks in
> the plain UI because it ends up with complicated rules like the above.
>
> It's difficult to explain and will end up surprising users, so my
> preference is for my original patch that just displays the content of
> the blob when a symlink is found.  This is consistent with both
> "git show" and "git cat-file".
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I like this idea. It's intuitive. If the symlink points to a file in the 
repo, obviously we should display it. In the event a symlink points 
outside the repo, could we do something similar to `file foo.symlink`'s 
output and print the path it's pointing to? That would remain 
informative and (afaik) won't jeopardize security because we're not 
actually following an out-of-repo symlink.