[pkg-wpa-devel] Bug#622837: libpcsclite1: please drop Recommends: pcscd

[Ludovic Rousseau]

Le 15/04/11 10:40, Jonathan Nieder a écrit :
> Ludovic Rousseau wrote:
>
>> You think it is a bug.
>> I think it is not a bug.
>>
>> How do you propose to solve this "bug"?
>> What would be OK for you as a solution?
>
> I don't want to argue much.  I do consider it a bug that installing
> wpasupplicant causes a setuid smartcard daemon to be installed.  I
> believe it is an unintended consequence.  It is not the best thing
> to happen behind the user's back.

pcscd is not (no more) suid. It is sgid group pcscd
$ ls -l /usr/sbin/pcscd
-rwxr-sr-x 1 root pcscd 110528 30 mars  10:40 /usr/sbin/pcscd

Is your problem a security issue?


pcscd is no more started at system boot but on request only.
So if you do not use a smart card application you have no extra process 
running.

Is your problem a RAM/CPU consumption issue?

Or is your problem a disk space issue?

> That said:
>
>   - I could easily be wrong;
>   - I am not claiming you made some bad decision before, just that
>     this is a problem for Debian to solve (that's what the BTS is
>     for, after all).

But I still do not know what the _real_ problem is. So I have no idea 
how I could solve it.

> I would propose:
>
>   - if users of the library will crash or otherwise fail if pcscd
>     is not installed, mentioning that in the package description;

The library functions would just return the error SCARD_E_NO_SERVICE.
That is why it is perfectly possible to have libpcsclite1 installed but 
not pcscd. No crash should happen.

>   - otherwise, downgrading the Recommends to a Suggests and
>     notifying the maintainers of reverse-dependencies that they
>     should add Depends: pcscd.

So wpasupplicant should add a Depends: pcscd?
Would that solve the problem for you?

> No doubt there are plenty of alternative fixes possible.
>
> Hope that helps,

Please describe exactly what needs to be fixed.

Regards,

-- 
  Dr. Ludovic Rousseau