Re: [RFC] A simple draft for channels

[Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net>]

Hi Pjotr,

> On Fri, Jan 19, 2018 at 02:41:42PM +0100, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
>> Authorizing keys is necessarily limited to root since the store is
>> shared among all users of the machine.  I don’t see any way around that
>
> Well, the daemon could update itself with its own privileges.

I think Ludo’s point is that this is a security issue, not a technical
limitation.

> How
> about maintaining authentication for a channel at runtime in RAM. When
> the daemon restarts it is lost. The channel will not be shared with
> other users. So every user maintains their own channels. When a
> channel reconnects it authenticates itself again.

It all ends up in the store though and is thus available to everybody.

> There really is no reason to share individual channels between users
> (other then their outputs).

Yes, channel configuration and state is kept in the user’s home
directory.  But authorization for downloading and installing substitutes
in /gnu/store currently still falls to root.

--
Ricardo

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