[R-sig-Debian] /etc/R/Renviron doesn't set R_LIBS_USER anymore

[Ranke, Johannes]

On 2017-07-03 09:58, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
> On 2 July 2017 at 23:24, Kirill Müller wrote:
> | On 02.07.2017 22:01, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
> | > On 2 July 2017 at 21:39, Kirill Müller wrote:
> | > | Hi
> | > |
> | > | An upgrade to R 3.4.1 on Ubuntu removed the default setting of
> | > | R_LIBS_USER in /etc/R/Renviron. What's the rationale behind this? 
> Thanks.
> | >
> | > Pretty much exactly what I told you in person last week :)
> | >
> | > - idea is to prefer /usr/local/lib/R/site-library/
> | > - multi-user more important than per-user
> | >
> | > Also see https://bugs.debian.org/866768
> | >
> | > The transition may be too harsh though. I did not consider the
> possibility of
> | > /usr/local/lib/R/site-library/ *not* being writeable.  So what I 
> could do is
> | > to re-add the per-user directory as a fall-back after the preferred
> | > /usr/local/lib/R/site-library.
> | Thanks. The site-library is owned by root/staff on my system, and my
> | user isn't member of the staff group (Ubuntu 17.04). I'm not sure how
> | this looks on a factory-fresh install, but IMO users should be able 
> to
> | just use install.packages().
> 
> You should (as the local admin) set up appropriate groups and policies.
> 
> In the simplest case, one addgroup would do.

While we are in this discussion, I would like to add that admins should 
be aware of the fact that adding a user to the "staff" group gives a lot 
of power and responsibility to that user, such a user can add 
executables to /usr/local/bin which is per default in the PATH of every 
user on the system. These binaries may override those in /usr/bin [1]. 
This is not necessary for R users that just want to install packages 
system-wide.

Shouldn't we recommend a dedicated group for installing R packages in 
order to avoid these security implications?

[1] https://wiki.debian.org/SystemGroups

Cheers,

Johannes