Re: [Tracker] Running Tracker with dbus system bus

[Ralph Böhme <rb netafp com>]

Hi Martyn

Am 06.01.2014 um 11:58 schrieb Martyn Russell <martyn lanedo com>:
> > fwiw, the requirements for the described use case don't neccessarily
> > require running Tracker as root. What's need is using dbus system
> > context, not session context, so that arbitrary users (processes with
> > distinct uids) can connect. The latter is not allowed by dbus for
>
> I've actually been wondering this since the start of this thread. Is there some reason why using the SYSTEM 
> bus for all communication instead of the SESSION bus can't be done?

Well, I've been actually trying to suggest exactly that approach from the beginning. :)))

> It wouldn't take much to patch and should work.

Marvellous!

> It doesn't solve the problem for direct-access clients though and that's generally faster when querying.

Can live with that I think.

> > user context services (ie you can't connect as arbitrary user to a
> > dbus session service from another user (another euid that is)).
> >
> > A proper solution (with security in mind) might be * add an option
> > that makes Tracker use system dbus context instead of session
> > context * add another option to take a user under which Tracker will
> > run in this case, this user MUST not be root
>
> In the short term, we might be able to fix this without even thinking about the user running the processes 
> (root or whoever), but rather just use the right dbus context. Then it's up to distros or whoever uses 
> Tracker to run it under a separate user for the SYSTEM bus.
>
> I don't think this should be a build-time option, but rather a run-time option.

+1

> It's likely you want to run Tracker more than once on the same system with shared and non-shared resources.

Possibly, but that would probabyl complicate the issue beyond my capabilities. :/
Also, the assumption that the two use cases

1) Tracker running on an end user system (the way it's done until now), and
2) Tracker running on a server (the way I need it for interfacing with Samba)

are orthogonal is probably not too far off, is it?

-Ralph