Safe place to store user-defined parameters

driven

%(#FF0040)[File.expand_path("~")
/Users/johns_iMac]

slbaumgartner

@unknownuser said:

On Mac, there seems to be difference between copying a file in a directory and creating the file or folder from within a program. This is a basic things for security.

From what I know of Unix, this doesn't make sense to me. Can you give me an example?

@fredo6 said:

The problem users have with DEFPARAM_Dir folder is exactly that. Ruby cannot create it, but you can create it manually.

I'll have to try that out and see if I can understand why that happens. Does this occur on all versions of SU, including 2013, or only on older ones?

@fredo6 said:

What I am looking for is a safe place where Ruby can create folders and files.

Now, if, as suggested by Chris, I use /Library/Application Support/ as the root, the question is whether the root should not be /Library/Application Support/Sketchup, so that all SU plugins could create their own subfolders there. This would be much cleaner than if I create my folder at /Library/Application Support/LibFredo6.

My feeling is that this question should be taken seriously by the Sketchup application itself and supported from Ruby so that script writers don't have to bother.

Final word: excuse my ignorance, but what is the subtle difference between /Library/Application Support/ and ~/Library/Application Support/?

Fredo

First, you should understand that "~" is Unix shorthand for the user's home directory, usually /Users/<username>. /Library/Application Support is a central folder that all users can normally read, but non-admin users may not be able to write (varies). ~/Library is by default hidden by Finder, so many users don't even know it exists, but it is owned and normally writable by the user. It is also not normally viewable or writable by other users, and is meant to hold the application settings that are personal to that user.

And, yes, you should work within a subfolder of ~/Library/Application Support, not right there in the base. SU 2013 puts subfolders in ~/Library/Application Support/SketchUp 2013/SketchUp/. For example, that's where the Plugins fol

On Mac, there seems to be difference between copying a file in a directory and creating the file or folder from within a program. This is a basic things for security. [/quote]

From what I know of Unix, this doesn't make sense to me. Can you give me an example?

@fredo6 said:

The problem users have with DEFPARAM_Dir folder is exactly that. Ruby cannot create it, but you can create it manually.

I'll have to try that out and see if I can understand why that happens. Does this occur on all versions of SU, including 2013, or only on older ones?

[quote="fredo6":3f9n25ud]

What I am looking for is a safe place where Ruby can create folders and files.

Now, if, as suggested by Chris, I use /Library/Application Support/ as the root, the question is whether the root should not be /Library/Application Support/Sketchup, so that all SU plugins could create their own subfolders there. This would be much cleaner than if I create my folder at /Library/Application Support/LibFredo6.

My feeling is that this question should be taken seriously by the Sketchup application itself and supported from Ruby so that script writers don't have to bother.

Final word: excuse my ignorance, but what is the subtle difference between /Library/Application Support/ and ~/Library/Application Support/?

Fredo[/quote:3f9n25ud]

First, you should understand that "~" is Unix shorthand for the user's home directory, usually /Users/<username>. /Library/Application Support is a central folder that all users can normally read, but non-admin users may not be able to write (varies). ~/Library is by default hidden by Finder, so many users don't even know it exists, but it is owned and normally writable by the user. It is also not normally viewable or writable by other users, and is meant to hold the application settings that are personal to that user.

And, yes, you should work within a subfolder of ~/Library/Application Support, not right there in the base. SU 2013 puts subfolders in ~/Library/Application Support/SketchUp 2013/SketchUp/. For example, that's where the Plugins folder lives.

Steve

driven

@fredo6 said:

The problem users have with DEFPARAM_Dir folder is exactly that. Ruby cannot create it, but you can create it manually.

Fredo,

excuse me, but that's a crock, the only reason it will fail to write is if the encoding is wrong...

UFT8 and Unix(LF) will always write to SU from ruby on the mac, if there errors it will fail, but it will write.

where is an example of it failing to?

john

driven

This is most likely your problem...

this is how mac interprets your file, where it actually runs fine

/ToolsOnSurface.def: ASCII text, with very long lines

my mac's Terminal.app is set

LANG="en_US"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8"

SU is set

 `locale`
LANG=
LC_COLLATE="C"
LC_CTYPE="C"
LC_MESSAGES="C"
LC_MONETARY="C"
LC_NUMERIC="C"
LC_TIME="C"
LC_ALL=

given an Asian and maybe some European locale things may be problematic...

driven

yes, that it... or maybe not I do some checking

fredo6

@driven said:

excuse me, but that's a crock, the only reason it will fail to write is if the encoding is wrong...

UFT8 and Unix(LF) will always write to SU from ruby on the mac, if there errors it will fail, but it will write.

I think the problem of security may be about creating a folder from Ruby. The most frequent issue reported is about the creation of DEFPARAM_dir in the SU Plugins directory.

Fredo

thomthom

@slbaumgartner said:

@chris fullmer said:

@Steve - Writing to a plugin's folder on Windows can fail though, so its not really a god solution for Windows.

Chris - why would the write fail? It seems that if the user could install a plugin there, he should also be able to write a file there. I'm missing something about the real core of the problem...

Under windows the Program Files folder is locked down. They only want application packages installed - but the user should not add/remove files to it. And often users cannot add files to the Plugins folder - but Windows won't throw an error - instead place the files in the Virtual Store creating a shim which cause all sort of confusion and problems. You have to run as user with administrator rights and UAC turned off to avoid these issues.

TIG

This discussion seems to go on and on and ignore the simplest of solutions.
Find the users 'Temp' folder [names vary with OS etc]...
I have previously outlined how to get this for MAC and PC.
This 'Temp' folder is useful for holding temporary data, it can be purged by the system, so permament data needs to reside elsewhere...
This 'Local/Temp' folder is in a 'folder tree'.
The folder containing the 'Temp' folder can be found using File.dirname(tempfolderpath).
That container folder can be used to make your own subfolder to hold your more permanent data.
That container folder has the same unrestricted rights for the User as the Temp folder itself.
It is intended to hold app-specific folders/data...
Just open the C:/Users/User/Local folder to see this...

What is the problem in doing it this way?
I have done it thus for a long time, without any issues whatsoever...

slbaumgartner

@fredo6 said:

I think the problem of security may be about creating a folder from Ruby. The most frequent issue reported is about the creation of DEFPARAM_dir in the SU Plugins directory.

Fredo

Dir.mkdir should work fine in any folder where the user has write permission.

Do you know exactly what error message they get when this fails? That would help with diagnosis. Unless you trap them in your code, the error messages will appear in the Ruby Console. Two possibilities that come to mind:

Errno::EACCES: Permission denied - <name of the dir you tried to create> This means this user doesn't have write permission for the base folder in which you are trying to create a new dir. Could happen if they've somehow gotten your plugin installed in ~/Library/Application Support/..../Plugins but you are trying to create your directory in /Library/Application Support/.../Plugins. That could happen in SU 8 and earlier if you picked up SU's default path to plugins (/Library...) where an ordinary user might not have write permission. In this situation, the plugin itself must have been installed in ~/Library because a user always has permission there. SU 2013 has changed to keep plugins in ~/Library

Errno::ENOENT: No such file or directory - <the path you gave when you called Dir.mkdir> The path you gave does not exist (the base path leading up to your new dir, which of course does not itself exist unless the mkdir call succeeds). Note that Dir.mkdir does not expand "~", so you have to do it if you want to work in ~/Library/..., e.g. "/Users/Steve/Library/..."

Hope that helps
Steve

slbaumgartner

@thomthom said:

@slbaumgartner said:

@chris fullmer said:

@Steve - Writing to a plugin's folder on Windows can fail though, so its not really a god solution for Windows.

Chris - why would the write fail? It seems that if the user could install a plugin there, he should also be able to write a file there. I'm missing something about the real core of the problem...

Under windows the Program Files folder is locked down. They only want application packages installed - but the user should not add/remove files to it. And often users cannot add files to the Plugins folder - but Windows won't throw an error - instead place the files in the Virtual Store creating a shim which cause all sort of confusion and problems. You have to run as user with administrator rights and UAC turned off to avoid these issues.

Whoa! I didn't know about this Virtual Store/shim stuff. That sounds like Windows setting you up for problems! Simulating a write to a place you don't have permission to write (to install the plugin) then later refusing permission to write to the same place!!???

slbaumgartner

@tig said:

This discussion seems to go on and on and ignore the simplest of solutions.
Find the users 'Temp' folder [names vary with OS etc]...
I have previously outlined how to get this for MAC and PC.
This 'Temp' folder is useful for holding temporary data, it can be purged by the system, so permament data needs to reside elsewhere...
This 'Local/Temp' folder is in a 'folder tree'.
The folder containing the 'Temp' folder can be found using File.dirname(tempfolderpath).
That container folder can be used to make your own subfolder to hold your more permanent data.
That container folder has the same unrestricted rights for the User as the Temp folder itself.
It is intended to hold app-specific folders/data...
Just open the C:/Users/User/Local folder to see this...

What is the problem in doing it this way?
I have done it thus for a long time, without any issues whatsoever...

TIG - already answered. All of the tmp, temp, etc folders are meant for working files used while a program is running. No OS that I know of promises to keep such files around after the program exits. It may have been working for you, but that is only because the OS is lazy about cleaning up. This could change with any update. Also, most "disk cleanup" programs will erase the contents of these folders, so you are running risk of a user blowing away your data and then blaming you.

Steve

Aerilius

TIG speaks not of the temporary folder itself, but of its "parent folder". Under the assumptions of Windows users this would be a writable app data directory (exactly what we've been searching): C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local%(#999999)[\Temp] (Probably equal to what we get from the APPDATA environment variable.)
But we cannot blindly take a parent folder without knowing what it is. There is nothing wrong if other operating systems have the temporary folder at root level /tmp with no parent. Still not a single solution without OS-specific switches.

TIG

On a modern PC the user's Temp folder's 'container' is going to be C:/Users/User/AppData/Local/: or something slightly different on XP...
On a MAC it's a seemingly meaningless folder name that contains the user's temp folder [named ' T']: something like /var/folders/rp/b9k42l5x7xngx_8tckgs0zdr0000gn/
Both of these 'containers' are consistently made and are intended to be always be fully read/writable by the user and the user's applications - that is why they are there.
The Unix-like /tmp folder should never be needed, and it's not returned by ENV [my earlier illustrations of a hierarchy of temp folders had it in as a 'fall back' should all else failed]...

Other apps use the 'Local' folder to store their data in their own subfolders.
The differences between Local and Roaming were also spelled out in one of my earlier posts in this thread.

slbaumgartner

@tig said:

On a modern PC the user's Temp folder's 'container' is going to be C:/Users/User/AppData/Local/: or something slightly different on XP...
On a MAC it's a seemingly meaningless folder name that contains the user's temp folder [named ' T']: something like /var/folders/rp/b9k42l5x7xngx_8tckgs0zdr0000gn/
Both of these 'containers' are consistently made and are intended to be always be fully read/writable by the user and the user's applications - that is why they are there.
The Unix-like /tmp folder should never be needed, and it's not returned by ENV [my earlier illustrations of a hierarchy of temp folders had it in as a 'fall back' should all else failed]...

Other apps use the 'Local' folder to store their data in their own subfolders.
The differences between Local and Roaming were also spelled out in one of my earlier posts in this thread.

OK, so your notion is to find the user's temp folder and backtrack to its parent on the assumption that the parent is a stable, writable location.

I think you are half right: that folder will be writable. But the other half is why you are consternated by the weird path name synthesized by Mac OS X and also why this attack will fail.

Mac OS X uses its underlying UNIX library's temporary folder library, which was designed for the purposes I described. The odd folder name is a globally unique id that assures the temp files for this run of this app for this user won't collide with any other user or app's temp files. The paradigm is that an app requests a temporary file from the OS when it needs working space, gets a file handle in return, uses that file until completed, then closes the file. The app never needs to look at the full path to the temp file and has no assurance from the OS that the same folder will be used on another run or for a second temp file (after all, what if you start two instances of the same app at the same time? Do you want their working files to stomp on each other?). So, the problems arise from wanting to store persistent data using a facility that was designed for temporary data.

As already noted, Mac OS X expects that applications will put individual users' configuration data into "/Users/<userid>/Library/Application Support/<appname>/<subfolders as desired>", which is stable and is always writable by the userid. This is the nearest equivalent to Windows "C:\Users\User\AppData\Local<appname>". I don't know: is this folder entangled with magic redirection such as ThomThom described? On Mac OS X, ~/Library is hidden by default, but that's a Finder setting that has no effect on read/write access.

Steve

TIG

I didn't say I was disconcerted by the MAC's weird folder naming for the container of 'T'.
It works just fine, and you can make another subfolder in that container.
I was simply saying that is name is hardly 'user-friendly'...

I'm NOT supposing we hard-code any paths.

Using ENV each time will return the 'Temp' folder path for any OS, one way or another - see my examples earlier...
This is folder fine for storing things for that session [they might not be there next week]...

From that 'tree' we can get the 'Temp' folder's container.
That container folder is also readily writable.
It is not going to change session to session...
So if we want to store something longer than this session, then it's best to write it into your own subfolder at this level.

I see no reason to make other convoluted attempts to find another folder to write into ?
No one has yet explained why my simple approach should not be used

driven

Probably not the last word on the subject...

I ran some overnight file tools on all of the plugins folders content

I've gone through it to look for any differences of any sort

Some of fredo's had this

00000000 62 70 6C 69 73 74 30 30 55 74 65 73 74 33 08 00 |bplist00Utest3..|

it's possibly a Windows Registry Editor key?

so then I went hunting

the only files with this flag are in DEFPARAM_Dir and Cadfather png files

I did A complete clean instal checking for this flag

it doesn't reappear on any new fredo files

it appears at some point I installed some CadFather plugin that included a DEFPARAM_Dir and this flag has been moved into all my old Plugins folders.

with my fresh instal, system made a new DEFPARAM_Dir and it's clear of this or any other flag.

I believe on some macs this may be seen as a corrupt folder

another observation is that plugins downloaded and installed retain

/Downloads/FREDOTOOLS_Dir_12: com.apple.quarantine: 0002;51c32928;Safari.app;CEF9108C-32D9-4A38-91B1-51C844D26E03

but the same plugin from a SCF Store in SU instal is clear of this flag.

It's possible some macs won't run files with this flag depending on local settings.

@Fredo I think your Users may have a corrupt Folder issue.

john

driven

Permissions for the new code generated one in User Library

upstairs;~ johns_iMac$ ls -lr@   /Users/johns_iMac/Library/Application\ Support/SketchUp\ 2013/SketchUp/Plugins/DEFPARAM_Dir
total 8
-rw-r--r--  1 johns_iMac  staff  1168 Jun 20 17;05 LibFredo6.def

Permissions for the old one in System Library


upstairs;~ johns_iMac$ ls -lr@  /Library/Application\ Support/Google\ SketchUp\ 7/SketchUp/PluginsParking/DEFPARAM_Dir
total 40
-rwxr-xr-x  1 johns_iMac  admin   607 Apr  8  2009 readme.txt
-rw-r--r--  1 johns_iMac  admin  3102 Feb  2  2010 RoundCorner.def
-rw-r--r--  1 johns_iMac  admin   827 Jan 16  2010 HoverSelect.def
-rw-r--r--  1 johns_iMac  admin  3219 May 12  2009 FreeScale.def
-rw-r--r--  1 johns_iMac  admin  3164 Mar 11  2010 FredoScale.def

fredo6

@driven said:

@Fredo I think your Users may have a corrupt Folder issue.

john

John,

I am not sure I understand what you mean.
What is sure is that all my files come straight from a Windows PC (I don't have a Mac). And the Def files are generated by the scripts not coming from installation.
Corruption is always possible afterward as for any read/write operations when programs sometimes crashes.

Fredo

fredo6

@tig said:

I see no reason to make other convoluted attempts to find another folder to write into ?
No one has yet explained why my simple approach should not be used

TIG,

Temporary folder is fine for session files and fortunately the location can be safely determined on both Mac and PC via ENV variable.

For persistent files, I mean, data users need to keep across SU sessions, and even across SU versions (and plugin versions), we need a safe place which is not normally cleaned up by the system like a Temp folder would be.

On Windows, ENV["LOCALAPPDATA"] seems OK (except maybe on Windows XP according to Dan)
On Mac, it seems that /Library/Application Support/SketchUp can be and acceptable root and is writable with no security constraint.

I don't say that the problem is solved because

there was a discussion about using /Library or ~/Library
I am not too sure on how to get the root directory via a ruby mecahnism, either ENV or Sketchup.find_support_files, especially a stable method across SU6, SU7, SU8 and SU13.
As you say, it is never good to hardcode a directory path

Fredo

Aerilius

What speaks against using an iterative search?


# Find an existing and writable directory where to store user data.
dir = [
  ENV["LOCALAPPDATA"],                    # Windows ver. 6+
  ENV["APPDATA"],                         # Windows
  File.join(ENV["HOME"].to_s, ".local", "share"), # Free desktop standard
  File.join(ENV["HOME"].to_s, "Library", "Application Support"), # OS X
  "."                                     # Fallback; exists always, where as ENVs may not.
].compact.map{ |path| File.expand_path(path) } # expands links and path separators
 .find{ |path| File.exists?(path) && File.writable?(path) }
DATA_DIR = File.join(dir, "MyPlugin")