[Bug 592489] Re: sabayon-apply hosed my system due to inadequate documentation

[Jordan Erickson]

> No reasonable user would expect it to operate on the current
> user when the working directory is another user's home directory.

I respectfully disagree. Running a command designed to apply user
configurations as the root user would presumably run it on the root user
- especially since that's what the command was designed to do. If you're
weary, look at the code you're running before you run it as root! Very
important to know *exactly* what you're running as root.

-- 
sabayon-apply hosed my system due to inadequate documentation
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/592489
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Status in “sabayon” package in Ubuntu: Confirmed

Bug description:
Binary package hint: sabayon

The man page for sabayon-apply is woefully inadequate. In trying to apply a profile to a newly-created user, I ran sabayon-apply as root to gain write access to the user's $HOME (in my case, file ownership wasn't an issue). I issued the following commands:

cd ~newuser
sudo sabayon-apply profile_name

Imagine my horror when sabayon-apply applied the profile (which turned out to be broken) to root, NOT newuser! Thus, my system is now hosed as I've been unable to figure what got changed; all I know is that now apps like the Users Settings app complains, "You are not allowed to modify the system configuration."

Command line programs nearly always operate either on whatever is specified on the command line or on the current directory. The documentation for sabayon-apply makes no mention about how to select which user it should operate on (which is already a gross omission). So, the only logical guess is that it must copy the files to the current directory. No reasonable user would expect it to operate on the current user when the working directory is another user's home directory.

Please, if you do something weird--especially if it has the potential to be destructive--document it!