lsmod path hardcoded in v4l/Makefile

  Hi list!

It seems the path to lsmod tool is hardcoded in the Makefile for out-of-tree 
building of v4l-dvb.
Now at least gentoo has moved lsmod from /sbin to /bin.
Additionally it is bad style (or at least I am told so), to not rely on $PATH 
but hardcode pathes for tools that should be in $PATH.

So the attached patch removes the hardcoded /sbin from the lsmod call.

Signed-off-by: Matthias Schwarzott <zzam@gentoo.org>

Regards
Matthias
  

On Dienstag, 23. Juni 2009, Andy Walls wrote:
> On Mon, 2009-06-22 at 16:36 +0200, Matthias Schwarzott wrote:
> > Hi list!
> >
> > It seems the path to lsmod tool is hardcoded in the Makefile for
> > out-of-tree building of v4l-dvb.
> > Now at least gentoo has moved lsmod from /sbin to /bin.
> > Additionally it is bad style (or at least I am told so), to not rely on
> > $PATH but hardcode pathes for tools that should be in $PATH.
>
> It's a potential security hole to rely on $PATH instead of absolute
> paths when running a command as root.

Shouldn't $PATH of root be considered safe? Else the distro or the system 
setup is doing something worse, and can't be improved by using fixed pathes 
in some scripts and Makefiles.

Regards
Matthias
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On Dienstag, 23. Juni 2009, Theodore Kilgore wrote:
> On Mon, 22 Jun 2009, Andy Walls wrote:
> > On Mon, 2009-06-22 at 16:36 +0200, Matthias Schwarzott wrote:
> >> Hi list!
> >>
> >> It seems the path to lsmod tool is hardcoded in the Makefile for
> >> out-of-tree building of v4l-dvb.
> >> Now at least gentoo has moved lsmod from /sbin to /bin.
>
> Sorry, but is it considered impertinent to ask why that lsmod should be
> moved from /sbin (system binaries, and lsmod certainly is one of those)
> and stick it into /bin instead? Is there any cogent reason for doing a

/sbin are binaries that only root should use. But lsmod can be used by users, 
too.
Suse also has only /bin/lsmod I think.
I don't know too much about the reason for the move, but it was long ago - 
version 0.9.11 contained that move and was released around year 2003.
Gentoo ebuild added /sbin/lsmod as compat symlink for things still hardcoding 
the path, but that was removed 2009 - 6 years should be enough.

> thing like that, which may have escaped my attention? Unless one is making
> some very small distro for some very small hardware and (say) one of /bin
> and /sbin is symlinked to the other, I find a change like that to be
> extremely puzzling. So, really. Why?
For a real answer to "why", do ask module-init-tools maintainer.

Regards
Matthias
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On Tue, 23 Jun 2009, Matthias Schwarzott wrote:
> > On Mon, 2009-06-22 at 16:36 +0200, Matthias Schwarzott wrote:
> > > It seems the path to lsmod tool is hardcoded in the Makefile for
> > > out-of-tree building of v4l-dvb.
> >
> Shouldn't $PATH of root be considered safe? Else the distro or the system

I believe make will set the variable whenever the makefile is used, even
when building as non-root.

It turns out that it was just lsmod with no path originally, but Michael
Krufky changed it back in 2005 (commit b0e7b40744ef) to have a hardcoded
path.  Then later in commit c91e7f84a1d6 the only use of 'v4l_modules' was
deleted, so we can just delete this line and not worry about sbin and
paths.

Mauro,

Please pull from http://linuxtv.org/hg/~tap/fix

for the following changeset:

build: Remove module list cruft
http://linuxtv.org/hg/~tap/fix?cmd=changeset;node=fb228bb1ad9f
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