/ is writable on mac... leading to lots of awkward msi droppings?

[Steve Brown]

On Wed, 5 Jan 2011, Charles Davis wrote:

> On 1/5/11 1:18 AM, Charles Davis wrote:
>> On 1/5/11 12:31 AM, Dan Kegel wrote:
>>> Quentin Paris informs me that the root directory is
>>> user-writable on MacOSX (shudder), which means
>>> our beloved z: mapping leads to lots of garbage
>>> directories named e.g. /fd91216cc2ce81eb2ce16a058619
>>> after running msi installers.
>> Now where would he get that idea from?
>>
<<snip>>

>
> But why is MSI putting anything in Z:\ at all? I'm guessing those
> folders really belong in the temp directory; if the temp dir is Z:\,
> then we really need to fix that. No program should be using the root
> directory as a dumping ground :).

It's not just Macs -- it seems to be a global .msi issue.  I'm no Windows 
guru, but I find several of those directories on Windows machines I 
administer as well (in C:\).  I've never taken the time to dig deeper, but 
they seem to be left over from _failed_ installs.

As far as permissions to write in the root directory, an installer has to 
be running with administrator rights to be mucking around in system 
directories no matter how it gets those rights -- directory permissions, 
sudo, UACs, whatever.

Steve Brown
sbrown7 at umbc.edu