Looking for co-mentors for a GSoC Dolphin/KIO project

[Elvis Angelaccio]

On Sun, Jan 8, 2017 at 8:14 PM, Aleix Pol <aleixpol at kde.org> wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 8, 2017 at 7:48 PM, Elvis Angelaccio
> <elvis.angelaccio at kde.org> wrote:
>> Hi David and everyone,
>> GSoC 2017 is near and it's time to discuss project ideas.
>> This year I want to tackle one of the biggest problems in Dolphin:
>> lack of polkit support. Dolphin users often don't know how to use the
>> command line, so when they have to move root-owned files around they
>> are forced to start Dolphin with root permissions, which is bad and
>> dangerous.
>>
>> GSoC is a great opportunity and I'm confident we can find an awesome
>> student who will fix this. :)
>>
>> I started a draft of the project idea in [1] and I'm looking for
>> co-mentors and feedback.
>> In particular @David:
>> 1) Am I right to claim that KAuth support needs to go only in the file
>> protocol? i.e. basically refactor into KAuth actions the parts of
>> file.cpp and file_unix.cpp where the actual interaction with the
>> filesystem happens.
>> 2) Is this even possible from a techical point of view? Or maybe KAuth
>> and ioslaves don't play well together?
>>
>> You should be able to edit the shared document, I hope. Please let me
>> know if that's not the case.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Elvis
>>
>> [1]: https://share.kde.org/index.php/s/bRBrrkOkuSCbkhT
>
> Hi Elvis,
> This is a good idea and I see tha it can be useful. I see some
> problems though, that could lead the wrong people to the task.
>
> How do we want to implement this? Do we want to be able to run
> kioslaves as root? Or do we want to Implement kauth/policykit support
> in the file kioslave?

Yes, kauth in the file kioslave is what I was thinking. Running the
whole kioslave as root sounds dangerous indeed.

> In either case, no modifications in Dolphin should be required. I'm
> leaning towards the latter, though.
>
> I think it could be interesting to think about the security
> implications it would have to have a file kio that can escalate to
> root, note that this will extend to all applications that use KIO, not
> just dolphin.

Yep indeed. The file slave should only delegate the minimal amount of
work necessary to the root helper (this probably needs some
refactoring).

>
> Also if this is not done properly, we could end up with the whole kio
> file duplicated into a kauth helper. I'd say it's worth investigating
> how the student will implement this. It's well-known by now that it's
> not the best idea to have the students design the approach they'll
> take.

Right, the approach definitely needs to be clear before the student
starts. Also because this project involves kio, ioslaves, kdeinit,
kauth...
Really easy to get lost in all this stuff for a new contributor :)

>
> HTH,
> Aleix

Cheer
Elvis