Re: [Exim] Problem with -Meb environment being destroyed

Typing away merrily, Philip Hazel produced the immortal words:
> > Thanks for the report. I will do something about it in due course.

Responsiveness. Coo ... :^) Thanks.

> I have done a bit of thinking about this. On reflection, it seems to me
> that flattening the environment was a bad idea, and should be removed.
> You never know what settings might be required in some OS.

May I throw a load of mud into the settling waters of this argument and
say "maximum paranoia"? I really dislike having setuid programs which
start other programs and which don't flatten the environment, unless
there's extremely good reason.

How about a "preserve_environment" which takes a list of environment
variables, or if unset passes things through by default?

preserve_environment = EDITOR:VISUAL:TERM:TERMINFO:DISPLAY:WINDOW

Then when someone hits a weird OS problem, they can tack the relevant
variable in there too. And of course all of these variables should be
truncated to some limit - viz the recent TERMINFO problems with one of
the curses libraries.

Thoughts/flames?
--
HTML email - just say no --> Phil Pennock
"We've got a patent on the conquering of a country through the use of force.
We believe in world peace through extortionate license fees." -Bluemeat