Shell escape & ConTeXt (was: Re: EPS to PDF--en masse?)

Shell escape & ConTeXt (was: Re: EPS to PDF--en masse?)

[Adam Lindsay]

TeX on Mac OS X Mailing List said this at Mon, 7 Jun 2004 20:00:01 -0400:

>Shell escape is a mechanism which basically stops TeX processing, allows
>an external program (like epstopd script) to run and then resume the
>processing. The problem is that it allows any program to be run. So if
>someone sends you a malicious TeX file, it can do good amount of damage
>like wipe your home folder.

Hi MacOSX-TeXers and ConTeXters.

I just happened to revisit this recently, wondering how to make the
gwTeX/ConTeXt experience a bit more usable "out of the box". I remember a
few months ago some ConTeXters suggesting on MacOSX-TeX that shell_escape
be set to true, to make things easier for users. The security
implications quashed that idea pretty quickly.

Instead, how about if gwTeX's default texmf.tetex/context/config/
texexec.ini includes the line:

  for  tetex  set  TeXPassString     to  -progname=context -shell-escape

That ought to be as safe as any ConTeXt installation, without negatively
impacting risk for other macro packages, right?

(disclaimer: I don't run gwTeX on my main rig (TeXLive for me), but I try
to keep an eye on what's going on over there. For whatever TeXLive-ish
reason, my texexec.ini includes  --default-translate-file=cp8bit on that
line as well.)
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 Adam T. Lindsay                      atl-Zrdc6muVEXhFdZ2Pf3w6Nw@public.gmane.org
 Computing Dept, Lancaster University   +44(0)1524/594.537
 Lancaster, LA1 4YR, UK             Fax:+44(0)1524/593.608
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Re: Shell escape & ConTeXt

[Hans Hagen]

Adam Lindsay wrote:

>(disclaimer: I don't run gwTeX on my main rig (TeXLive for me), but I try
>to keep an eye on what's going on over there. For whatever TeXLive-ish
>reason, my texexec.ini includes  --default-translate-file=cp8bit on that
>line as well.)
>  
>
that's a sad story:

just before tl 2003 came out, we found out that 8 bit was kind of gone 
from tex (at least no 8 bit to written files, which renders e.g. 
verbatim and tocs and such useless, esp since context normaly does *not* 
expand toc entries); this was fixed by applying cp8bit by default but  i 
added it to the ini file to be sure for older versions of pdftex

some time ago, we foun dout that the cp8bit vector is incomplete (lower 
part missing) so thi sis why recent context distributions have natural.tcx

i still have to check the latest tl binaries (just got them) but they 
should default to pure 8 bit without loading the tcx file

Hans

 

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