MIR for monit.

[Chuck Short]

Binary package hint: monit

Hi,

I would like to add monit to main. It is apart of the canonical-application-support specification.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MIRMonit

if you have any questions please let me know.

Regards
chuck

[Chuck Short (zulcss)]

Any update on this?

Regards
chuck

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

What I don't like is that it's a single-binary, network-facing process running as root, which seems very dangerous to have given that most of its operations can be done as unprivileged system user (pinging local services, etc.). I'd much rather have a small suid root callout which can restart processes (factor out the only thing that requires root), and have the main daemon run as "monitdaemon" without particular privileges.

If that's too much effort, can this get a very restrictive apparmor profile which greatly restricts file system read/write access and drops unnecessary capabilities?

Packaging looks fine.

[Marc Deslauriers (mdeslaur)]

It needs to exec arbitrary files, and have enough permissions to read arbitrary files (depending on what the admin configures it to do). I don't think it would be feasible to create a generic apparmor profile for it. The apparmor profile would need to be created by the administrator to match what they're using monit for.

This is a scary application security-wise.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Chuck, is this a "nice to have" issue or a firm commitment? In the former case, I'd just "wontfix" it, in the latter case it seems that this project needs a serious rewrite (or saner replacement).

[Chuck Short (zulcss)]

I think its a "nice to have" but I am not sure about the commitment. Let me check on that.

[Chuck Short (zulcss)]

<elmo> zul: monit's crack, I'm quite happy for it to be not promoted; I'm not convinced we actually use it in the DC or anywhere

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Thanks for confirming. Closing then.