[ELDK] Permissions on /root directory keep ssh from working properly

[Wolfgang Denk]

Dear Dave,

In message <B7BC4CB64CA090478F283BA589292737578811 at abtg-mail.ambientcorp.com> you wrote:
> 
> I've discovered something that I'd consider a minor bug in the default
> denx4.2 (maybe other versions too) distribution's root filesystem.   It
> creates the /root directory with permissions of 775, which prevents
> dropbear from working properly if you want to set up the ssh server to
> allow clients to log in using authorized keys.  ssh considers it a
> security hole if the directory containing the authorized keys is
> writable by anyone other than the user.

What exactly has the /root directory to do with that?

> I'm not sure if this should be fixed by simply making the default
> permissions on the /root directory 755, or if this would more
> appropriately be done by the dropbear RPM during installation, since
> it's an ssh specific problem.  Maybe it would even be adequate to simply
> add a line to dropbear's README explaining that permissions of the user
> directory must be changed when using authorized keys.

According to the dropbear documentation (see "man 8 dropbearkey"), the
host keys are supposed to be placed in the /etc/dropbear/ directory.
That's what we're using all the time in ouyr setups, and we never had
any problems. And the permissions on the /etc/dropbear/ directory are
usually 0755 in our systems, without problems either.

Do you mean the permissions for the directory of the user  keys?  But
that is ~/.ssh, i. e. in your case it would be /root/.ssh ?

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

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DENX Software Engineering GmbH,     MD: Wolfgang Denk & Detlev Zundel
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