Re: [Fwd: Obscure problem with Bash when printing]

[Francis Litterio]

James Richard Tyrer wrote:

>> While this is an obscure problem.  It is a very serious bug since Bash does
>> not correctly set HOME to match the user as reported by:
>>     id -un
>
> I thought that I should clarify that this ONLY happens when the LPR daemon
> (which is running as root) calls the filter script (as the user that submitted
> the job) that HOME is not correctly set to the: "passwd" file entry for the
> user.

An examination of the source code (file variables.c) shows that Bash
sets HOME only if it's not already in the environment:

    /* Set $HOME to the information in the password file if we didn't get
       it from the environment. */

    ...

    static void
    set_home_var ()
    {
      SHELL_VAR *temp_var;

      temp_var = find_variable ("HOME");
      if (temp_var == 0)
        temp_var = bind_variable ("HOME", sh_get_home_dir ());
    #if 0
      VSETATTR (temp_var, att_exported);
    #endif
    }

Thus, it is the LPR daemon that is not changing HOME before exec'ing the
filter script.