The code will be fixed for all known security vulnerabilities,
and a make.conf(5) knob (ENABLE_SUID_MAN) will be provided for
those who still want it installed setuid for whatever reasons.
The catpaging and setuidness features of man(1) combined make
it vulnerable to a number of security attacks. Specifically,
it was possible to overwrite system catpages with arbitrarily
contents by either setting up a symlink to a directory holding
system catpages, or by writing custom -mdoc or -man groff(1)
macro packages and setting up GROFF_TMAC_PATH in environment
to point to them. (See PR below for details).
This means man(1) can no longer create system catpages on a
regular user's behalf. (It is still able to if the user has
write permissions to the directory holding catpages, e.g.,
user's own manpages, or if the running user is ``root''.)
To create and install catpages during ``make world'', please
set MANBUILDCAT=YES in /etc/make.conf. To rebuild catpages
on a weekly basis, please set weekly_catman_enable="YES" in
/etc/periodic.conf.
PR: bin/32791
of perl man pages and site_perl directories for alpha and i386 in /usr/local,
and share/aclocal and share/doc/ja in /usr/local and /usr/X11R6.
Reviewed by: the ports list
Approved by: steve (alpha part)