[collectd] Symlinks to Plugins

[Pavel V.]

> Hi,


> Our deployment system which makes extensive use of symlinks. However, it seems that plugins cannot be loaded through symlinks.

> Source version 5.4.1; plugin.c; starting at line 970:
> else if (!S_ISREG (statbuf.st_mode))
> {
>   /* don't follow symlinks */
>   WARNING ("plugin_load: %s is not a regular file.",
>      filename);
>   continue;
> }
> I have been unable to find an explanation in the FAQ or through Google (seems all/most of the
> mailing list archives are now indexed). Would someone mind elaborating on why symlinks are not followed to load plugins?


Hi!

I think what this is additional security measure, proposed by collectd developers.
Collectd is running with root privileges and library loading by symlink was considered insecure.

Collect currently has no support for custom plugins, compiled independently from collectd (API is
not considered to be stable, read https://collectd.org/wiki/index.php/Plugin_architecture),  and
packages, provided by OS, contain all plugins, that are available for the platform. So mainly there
are no needs to load plugins by symlink and that was prohibited.   

I have no another explanation for this.
However I also see no similar checks at apache httpd, for example, and there are no problems with it.



-- 
Regards,
 Pavel                          mailto:pavel2000 at ngs.ru