gh-57911: Sanitize symlink targets in tarfile on win32

[wiomoc]

CC @encukou

• Issue: relative symlinks in tarfile.extract broken (windows) #57911

[encukou]

Should this be done for hardlinks as well?

I'd prefer saying “rewrite” rather than “sanitize”, as this is not fixing unsafe input.

We should probably skip this for leading // -- that would turn symlink targets into UNC paths, where I'm not sure of the security implications, and anyway it's not something you'd find in a portable UNIX-based tarball.

[wiomoc]

Should this be done for hardlinks as well?

This problem doesn't seam to occur when creating hardlinks:

>>>os.mkdir("tmp")
>>>os.mkdir("tmp\\child")
>>>open("tmp\\child\\test.txt", "w").write("hello world")
11>>>os.link("tmp/child/test.txt", "tmp/testlink.txt")
>>>open("tmp\\testlink.txt").read()
'hello world'

We should probably skip this for leading // -- that would turn symlink targets into UNC paths, where I'm not sure of the security implications, and anyway it's not something you'd find in a portable UNIX-based tarball.

On the one hand, I see the risk of security implications, but I also note that in pathlib, slashes are also replaced in UNC paths.

[encukou]

OK; re-reading the duscussion I see experts suggesting to always replace, so let's go with that.

[bedevere-bot]

🤖 New build scheduled with the buildbot fleet by @encukou for commit 942b6e3 🤖

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[encukou]

Suggested change

	When extracting tar files on Windows Posix flavoured path separators in symlink
	targets will be replaced by backward-slashes to prevent corrupted links.
	When extracting tar files on Windows, slashes in symlink
	targets will be replaced by backslashes to prevent corrupted links.

[encukou]

Looks good! Could you also add an entry to Doc/whatsnew/3.15.rst?

[encukou]

Thank you!

[picnixz]

I think this broke some buildbots: https://buildbot.python.org/#/builders/914. It wasn't detected until #138276 (which was 20h ago, but this change is 2 days ago and the previous buildbot run was 3 days ago)

[AA-Turner]

@picnixz if you open a revert PR as draft, you could use !buildbot to check this worker & see if it passes again?

A

[picnixz]

I'm not on a dev session but I'll do it tomorrow if no one beats me to it.

[wiomoc]

The test only fails, when running on a Windows system with disabled symlink support - therefore it didn't occure on GH actions.
I have a possible fix in #138626

[dnicolodi]

Shouldn't the inverse normalization of path separator characters be done in tarfile.TarFile.add()? Otherwise, the symlink targets written in the tar archive are wrong when extracted on another platform (and I believe not conforming to the standard). See #151669.

[encukou]

I believe not conforming to the standard

Which standard are you referring to?

Shouldn't the inverse normalization of path separator characters be done in tarfile.TarFile.add()?

Perhaps, but, I'm still fixing issues from the last time I changed long-standing behaviour in tarfile.
The change needs far stronger justification than I can see currently.

[dnicolodi]

Which standard are you referring to?

The tar format definition. I haven't checked the format definition (and I don't even know whether it exists), but all paths in a tar file are usually stored with / as the path separator (and this is what the tarfile module implements, with one exception). The current behavior of tarfile.TarFile.add() is to use native path separators for symlink targets. On Windows, this result in tar files that produce wrong symbolic links when extracted on POSIX platforms.

Perhaps, but, I'm still fixing issues from the last time I changed long-standing behaviour in tarfile.

Think to this as more fallout from these changes. The normalization has always been missing, but it broke my application only since this PR has been merged (and Windows support for symlinks is more widespread: I would not have noticed it if not for the fact that GitHub Actions Windows runners have support for symlink enabled).

The change needs far stronger justification than I can see currently.

tar archives produced by code like

os.symlink("../baz", "foo")
tar=tarfile.open("sample.tar", "w")
tar.add("foo")
tar.close()

are currently invalid when created on Windows. In other words, they produce the wrong filesystem objects when extracted on a platform that uses / as path separator.

Maybe code like this can be fixed specifying a filter function that fixes the path separators on Windows. However, the exact same argument could have been made for the change in this PR. On the other hand, I don't see a way to fix tar archives produced by shutil.make_archive().

I think that having the normalization only on extract is the worst possible outcome as it introduces unnecessary asymmetry: users of the tarfile module need special treatment of symlinks on Windows when creating archives, but not when extracting them.

[encukou]

Which standard are you referring to?
The tar format definition. I haven't checked the format definition (and I don't even know whether it exists)

Could you check, then? An actual reference to the standard would make this an easy sell -- that would mean that relevant people already thought about this.
Talking about imaginary standards, on the other hand, make me think I need to consult a tarfile expert on this -- or become one (i.e. find all the caveats and consequences myself).

[bonzini]

The tar standard is a POSIX standard. POSIX does not make backslashes special in any way; they are a valid character in a file name. Therefore, POSIX treats a link name of a\b as a symbolic link to the file a\b in the current directory.

For example, https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=tar&apropos=0&sektion=5&manpath=FreeBSD+7.0-RELEASE&arch=default&format=html has

 linkpath
The full path of the linked-to file. Note that this is encoded
in UTF8 and can thus include non-ASCII characters.

and https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/basedefs/V1_chap03.html#tag_03_271 defines

3.170 Filename

A sequence of bytes consisting of 1 to {NAME_MAX} bytes used to name a file. The bytes composing the name shall not contain the <NUL> or <slash> characters. In the context of a pathname, each filename shall be followed by a <slash> or a <NUL> character; elsewhere, a filename followed by a <NUL> character forms a string (but not necessarily a character string). The filenames dot and dot-dot have special meaning. A filename is sometimes referred to as a "pathname component". See also Pathname.

3.271 Pathname

A string that is used to identify a file. In the context of POSIX.1-2017, a pathname may be limited to {PATH_MAX} bytes, including the terminating null byte. It has optional beginning <slash> characters, followed by zero or more filenames separated by <slash> characters. A pathname can optionally contain one or more trailing <slash> characters. Multiple successive <slash> characters are considered to be the same as one <slash>, except for the case of exactly two leading <slash> characters.

[bonzini]

Found something in the POSIX standard as well (https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/pax.html#tag_20_92_13_06), where directory entry type 2 "represents a symbolic link. The contents of the symbolic link shall be stored in the linkname field."

Within tar files, the contents of the symbolic link are best described in the linkpath extension record, which is defined as follows: "The pathname of a link being created to another file, of any type, previously archived. This record shall override the linkname field in the following ustar header block(s)."

In other words, the target of a symbolic link in a tar file should indeed be a pathname, and as such separated by forward slashes.

[dnicolodi]

Thanks @bonzini !

[dnicolodi]

@encukou I find the specification quotes by @bonzini clear in this respect. What is the best way to move this forward? I would love to see fix for this problem included in Python 3.15, if possible. That would avoid having to carry a downstream workaround for the issue we encountered testing with Python 3.15b2.

[rgommers]

Perhaps, but, I'm still fixing issues from the last time I changed long-standing behaviour in tarfile.
The change needs far stronger justification than I can see currently.

Since no one said it explicitly yet: this introduces a regression for sdist creation with meson-python on Windows under Python 3.15. It's likely that that also affects other build backends that rely on git archive + tarfile. That's about as strong a justification as one would need I think?

The regression is fixed by gh-151671, which looks correct.

[bonzini]

If this is not fixed, I guess meson would have to vendor the tarfile module. 🤷

[eli-schwartz]

If this is not fixed, I guess meson would have to vendor the tarfile module. 🤷

We will not, so don't bother suggesting it again.

[encukou]

Thanks for the standard links. I'm... not sure if I'd call any of them “the” tar standard; it looks like it's best to not talk about standards in this issue.

---

this introduces a regression for sdist creation with meson-python on Windows under Python 3.15.

I see: mesonbuild/meson#15932
It's about extracting to the filesystem, and then re-packing into a tarfile.
That looks like a reasonable use case. It can introduce FS-related artifacts (like normalization), but it'll also give you a more surprise-free tarball.

---

So, we have a regression. That gives us two options:

• Revert this (a fix for a 2012 issue), and try again in 3.16. That's the default course of action in beta.
• Apply gh-151669: Normalize symlink targets in tarfile.TarFile.gettarinfo() #151671 (replace backslashes with slashes when creating the archive). This is a new feature. I now think that's the right way to go, but of course it might have unintended consequences, again.

@hugovk, do you think we should add the feature to 3.15?

[hugovk]

Let's try #151671 for 3.15. We can still revert during the beta, if more issues come up, and also during the RC.