/dev/chat

Q: Script to configure accounts, SSHD, and firewall

12:33 AM

0

In terms of general security, am I doing anything wrong in this script? #!/bin/bash set -e #apt-get update #apt-get upgrade export ___DIRNAME ___DIRNAME=' SOURCE="${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" while [ -h "$SOURCE" ];do __DIRNAME="$(builtin cd -P "$(dirname "$SOURCE")" && pwd)" SOURCE="$(readlink "$SO...

security bash linux ssl

12:45 AM

@200_success - did you not want that migrated?

It's not a black-and-white situation.

@200_success - it rarely is 8-)

The summary is, on Code Review we have a requirement that a question must contain "working" code to be on-topic. (Otherwise, we turn into a debugging service.)

@200_success - yes reading it now

@200_success - see the issues now. If I see other Q's going that way I'll be sure to let others know.

Q: What questions are suitable for migration to Code Review, and how does the process work?

There were a few bugs in the code, so I put it On Hold, according to our usual procedure. Normally, that gives the author some time to bring it up to quality standards. But in this case, it also automatically rejected the migration.

That said, it's not fundamentally a "bad" question.

There would be interesting issues to point out in a Code Review, such as ensuring the /root/SECRET gets 0600 permissions before you write to it.

Now, let me turn the question around: why was the question off-topic for U&L?

It doesn't seem to violate any of the criteria on unix.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic

Well, you aren't @MichaelMrozek, and the closure reason wasn't really specified, so I guess you can't speak for him.

Code Review's must-have-working-code requirement tends to catch a lot of people off-guard. We've prepared guidelines for migrating questions to Code Review:

10

Consider this situation: There is this question on another site which I think would be a good candidate for migration to Code Review. What should I consider before flagging the question, or actually migrating it?

support faq migration

12:56 AM

@200_success - yeah I cannot speak for Michael as to why. It seems on topic to me as well, but he's been doing this a lot longer than I so I'd yield to his logic over mine 8-)

Consider a search on [meta.codereview] for [faq] migration to be its permalink.

Braiam

@200_success if I'm not mistaken, the author asked for it

Interesting.

Braiam

yep, we closed it first, and then it got migrated

unix.stackexchange.com/posts/131959/revisions

> Besides that I haven`t tried to run it yet , out side smoking a cigarette right now .

umm... I see the problem

@200_success I can't speak for Michael, but I would say it's off topic because it's subjective. U&L does have a policy about subjective questions. unix.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask

1:03 AM

Smoking is very bad for you.

But it's a Good Subjective question.

Certainly not an every-answer-is-valid kind of subjective question.

By the way, Code Review has the exact same don't-ask page.

@200_success my 2c: it's also not about Unix or Linux. It just runs on them. The question itself is "Anything wrong with my code"? That's off topic here. If it'd been "How can I do X on a *nix system?" it would have been fine.

@terdon However shell scripting is on-topic here

That depends… do you consider security to be an aspect of correctness? How about the lack of quoting in the script?

Yes, but the OP had already figured out how to do it. Dunno.

Faheem Mitha

@Patrick closing is ok as long as long as the reason makese sense. but in that case the reason given was "too broad" which clearly does not apply. The question is clear and precise and specific. Anything but broad. Regardless what you might think of its quality.

1:13 AM

@FaheemMitha It was closed as OT, not too broad.

I would have thought the scripts were working too. Nothing in the question says they don't. They sound exactly like code review to me. So if they don't work, I'd say the blame lies on the asker for not clarifying that.

Faheem Mitha

@terdon oh? not what i remember. one sec.

Q: Unix commands for generating random alphabet

@200_success Yes, fair enough. It's the "please review my code for me" that's not really on topic IMO.

Faheem Mitha

@terdon you must be thinking of a different question. this one was closed as too broad.

1

I have to write a script for this program. choose a random letter within a-z. Ask the user to guess the letter, match it with the chosen letter. If matched, display "correct", else prompt if the guessed letter is above or below the chosen letter. Can someone demonstrate with examples of how I m...

shell-script

@200_success We would need to first go through the script, understand what it does and then comment on whether it does it well. As a general rule, dumping 50 odd lines of code and asking for opinion feels OT to me.

1:15 AM

@terdon @FaheemMitha mixup. Faheem's reply was about a comment I made hours ago. current topic is a different question

Ah, right.

@FaheemMitha I'm fairly certain I chose "unclear what you're asking" on that question. When a question is closed, the final close reason is whatever the majority of people chose. So it simply means more people chose "too broad" than "unclear what you're asking"

It may be worth a post on [meta.unix] to clarify the U&L community's position. I don't know if you get these questions that often — perhaps also modify the on-topic page, and maybe also add a closure reason.

Anyway, @JamesAndino is welcome to fix the minor bugs to bring the question up to Code Review standards, then we'll reopen it.

Thank you all for this discussion.