Sharing Hall of Fame on multiuser system

[audiodude]

Hi!

I've installed angband on a shared Linux system as a fun diversion for the local users. But everyone only sees their own hall of fame! Is there anyway to symlink a file in the filesystem somewhere so that the hall of fames are linked together?

Thanks!
-Travis

[audiodude]

So I've tried recompiling with:

$ ./configure --with-setgid=games

But it seems like if you're on a UNIX-y system you end up with PRIVATE_USER_PATH set anyways:

https://github.com/angband/angband/blob/e415137cc4f200335924b9d56803c619bfbee43c/src/config.h#L55

So is the solution just to delete those lines?

Thanks,
-Travis

[audiodude]

Tried deleting the following lines:

/*
 * OPTION: Create and use a hidden directory in the users home directory
 * for storing pref files and character dumps.
 */
#if defined(UNIX) && !defined(MACH_O_CARBON) && !defined(PRIVATE_USER_PATH)
# define PRIVATE_USER_PATH "~/.angband"
#endif

and recompiling, but it didn't seem to help. Angband wanted to create a directory when it started up the first time: /usr/local/var/games/angband/user

[Nick]

I'm no expert, but you could try

./configure --without-private-dirs

[audiodude]

I'm no expert, but you could try

./configure --without-private-dirs

I did try that, but it doesn't work. It still outputs:

  var path:                               (not used)
  (with private save and score files in ~/.angband/Angband/)

[AnonymousHero]

I don't know how to get this working, but I think I ought to point out that there are probably(!) numerous security issues with this even if you get it working. (Angband and C codebases of its age are not exactly known for good security practices.)

[myshkin]

I did try that, but it doesn't work. It still outputs:

  var path:                               (not used)
  (with private save and score files in ~/.angband/Angband/)

I think you need to specify --with-setgid=<groupname>. I suspect that these code paths are old and not well tested, though.

[Magnate]

I think you need to specify --with-setgid=<groupname>. I suspect that these code paths are old and not well tested, though.

This is correct. Be warned that this setgid build mode is unmaintained though, as it's deprecated as a security risk.

This is a shame, because shared halls of fame are a neat idea, but you're the first person in about a decade to want one.

Let me know if you're still trying to get it working - I am back to building Angband and may be able to help.

[audiodude]

Tried deleting the following lines:

/*
 * OPTION: Create and use a hidden directory in the users home directory
 * for storing pref files and character dumps.
 */
#if defined(UNIX) && !defined(MACH_O_CARBON) && !defined(PRIVATE_USER_PATH)
# define PRIVATE_USER_PATH "~/.angband"
#endif

and recompiling, but it didn't seem to help. Angband wanted to create a directory when it started up the first time: /usr/local/var/games/angband/user

So it turns out this worked. After I create a random character and let him get killed on level 1 by a Jackal, the dead character showed up on my other user's hall of fame.

When you first start up Angband after doing this hack, it will say

angband: Cannot create '/usr/local/var/games/angband/user'

This is overcome by the following:

$ sudo mkdir /usr/local/var/games/angband/user
$ sudo chown root:games /usr/local/var/games/angband/user

Substituting "games" for whatever group you used for setgid in the confgure options of course.

Now what would be really cool is if it read other people's in-progress saves into the Hall of Fame display. I wonder if I could hack that together (I don't know much C, only Python and Javascript yikes!). But I feel I could hack it well enough that it would work on my system, even if it didn't work on others'.

[Magnate]

So it turns out this worked. After I create a random character and let him get killed on level 1 by a Jackal, the dead character showed up on my other user's hall of fame.

When you first start up Angband after doing this hack, it will say

angband: Cannot create '/usr/local/var/games/angband/user'

This is overcome by the following:

$ sudo mkdir /usr/local/var/games/angband/user
$ sudo chown root:games /usr/local/var/games/angband/user

Substituting "games" for whatever group you used for setgid in the confgure options of course.

Now what would be really cool is if it read other people's in-progress saves into the Hall of Fame display. I wonder if I could hack that together (I don't know much C, only Python and Javascript yikes!). But I feel I could hack it well enough that it would work on my system, even if it didn't work on others'.

Thanks for the update - I can probably fix the dir creation issue.

The way to achieve your last idea is to have the game add the in-progress savefile to the Hall of Fame on exit, just as if the character's dead. The difficult bit is to *delete* the previous entry for the same character so that a living character appears only once. To my knowledge the hall of fame code is add-only.

[myshkin]

The way to achieve your last idea is to have the game add the in-progress savefile to the Hall of Fame on exit, just as if the character's dead. The difficult bit is to *delete* the previous entry for the same character so that a living character appears only once. To my knowledge the hall of fame code is add-only.

Alternately, if permissions are such that the game binary can read all savefiles (but only write the user's), then predict_score() could add all scores, not just that of the current character.