Hi again,
Thanks for picking up the slack on these ports, where I dropped off.
I tested on amd64 for a few hours of use and briefly on macppc as well.
Things seem to be working quite nicely. My old emwm{,-utils} config(s)
carried over nicely. Also, following the pkg-readme's recommendation to
cross-reference the system config, I was able to integrate the
new workspace paging features into my config easily.
Here's some other stuff I ran after compiling and `make update`'ing the
ports:
/usr/ports/x11/emwm git:(master*) $ make port-lib-depends-check
/usr/ports/x11/emwm git:(master*) $ portcheck
x11/emwm
/usr/ports/x11/emwm git:(master*) $ cd ../emwm-utils
/usr/ports/x11/emwm-utils git:(master*) $ make port-lib-depends-check
/usr/ports/x11/emwm-utils git:(master*) $ portcheck
x11/emwm-utils
Good work! It is deeply appreciated. I really hope these get imported,
you did an excellent job.
Appreciated,
On Fri, 28 Aug 2026 00:59:00 +0000
David Uhden Collado <[email protected]> wrote:
> izzy Meyer wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I used to maintain these packages. Does the 2.0 version of
> > emwm-utils fix needing SUID root for lock/unlock &
> > suspend/reboot/poweroff functionality? I dropped maintainership due
> > to the development burden of maintaining patches that I couldn't
> > upstream that made it use bsd-auth instead as the ports tree
> > strips SUID root by default.
> >
> > If this update does not fix it, please consider updating my patches
> > to work in those areas again, as this would be beneficial to users
> > of this port.
> >
> > Thanks.
> >
>
> Hi iz,
>
> Thanks for pointing this out.
>
> I checked the 2.0 sources more closely, and upstream still expects
> xmsm to be setuid root for screen authentication and for privileged
> system operations. So no, upstream 2.0 does not solve this by itself.
>
> My first revision of the update did not correctly carry forward all of
> the existing OpenBSD-specific privilege and BSD Authentication work.
> I've fixed that in the new patches attached to this mail.
>
> The updated emwm-utils patch now refreshes the existing BSD
> Authentication support for the 2.0 source. On OpenBSD, screen
> unlocking uses auth_userokay(3) with the auth-xmsm authentication
> style rather than reading password hashes through getpwnam_shadow(3)
> and crypt(3).
>
> As a result, xmsm does not need to be setuid root. It remains
> installed setgid auth, as in the existing OpenBSD port, which gives
> BSD Authentication the access it requires without giving the whole
> session manager root privileges.
>
> I also restored the unprivileged shutdown model. emwm-utils is built
> with UNPRIVILEGED_SHUTDOWN, so shutdown/reboot/suspend commands
> execute with the invoking user's privileges rather than temporarily
> regaining root privileges. The OpenBSD patch uses shutdown(8),
> matching the _shutdown group authorization mechanism. For suspend,
> the existing OpenBSD setup using zzz(8), apmd(8), and wheel
> membership is retained and documented in pkg-readme.
>
> I also patched the upstream install rule and xmsm(1) documentation so
> they no longer describe or install xmsm as setuid root on OpenBSD. The
> manual page now documents the BSD Authentication/setgid-auth model and
> the fact that system commands run with the user's privileges.
>
> There were a few related cleanup changes as well. The OpenBSD makefile
> now preserves the ports framework CFLAGS instead of replacing them,
> and -lcrypt is disabled because crypt(3) is part of libc on OpenBSD
> and the OpenBSD authentication path no longer uses it directly.
>
> The second revision also includes some additional material distributed
> by the EMWM project: tellmwm for runtime workspace control, the
> application icon set, the core-hr Xcursor theme, alternative Motif
> dialog icons, and example X resources and GTK 2/3 configuration. These
> are installed as data/examples rather than modifying user
> configuration automatically.
>
> For the emwm port itself, I made a smaller follow-up adjustment. I
> added a pkg-readme explaining that users upgrading from EMWM 1.x may
> need to update an existing ~/.emwmrc to get the workspace menu and
> key bindings restored in EMWM 2.x. I also cleaned up the OpenBSD
> build patch so it preserves the compiler flags supplied by the ports
> infrastructure.
>
> So the new revision should preserve the important security properties
> of your previous OpenBSD patches while adapting them to the current
> 2.0 codebase.
>
> Thanks for bringing this up; it caught an important omission in my
> first version of the update.
>
> Best regards,
> David.
--
iz (she/her)
> I say mundane things
> so the uninteresting
> just might get noticed.
izder456 (dot) neocities (dot) org
