this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2025
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Am in the only one who cringes at install instructions that require piping some curl output into bash? (programming.dev)
submitted 5 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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curl https://some-url/ | sh

I see this all over the place nowadays, even in communities that, I would think, should be security conscious. How is that safe? What's stopping the downloaded script from wiping my home directory? If you use this, how can you feel comfortable?

I understand that we have the same problems with the installed application, even if it was downloaded and installed manually. But I feel the bar for making a mistake in a shell script is much lower than in whatever language the main application is written. Don't we have something better than "sh" for this? Something with less power to do harm?

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 5 days ago (5 children)

I think safer approach is to:

  1. Download the script first, review its contents, and then execute.
  2. Ensure the URL uses HTTPS to reduce the risk of man-in-the-middle attacks
[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 days ago (1 children)

If you've downloaded and audited the script, there's no reason to pipe it from curl to sh, just run it. No https necessary.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

The https is to cover the factthat you might have missed something.

I guess I download and skim out of principle, but they might have hidden something in there.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Wat. All https does is encrypt the connection when downloading. If you've already downloaded the file to audit it, then it's in your drive, no need to use curl to download it again and then pipe it to sh. Just click the thing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, https was for downloading it in the first place. My bad, I didn't get my thoughts out in the right order.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

That makes sense. I probably should have gotten it from context.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Install scripts are bad in general. ideally use officially packaged software.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 days ago (1 children)

But then they'd have to lay some guy 15$ to package it and thats like, spending money

[–] [email protected] -1 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Distros do the packaging. Devs can not be trusted

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

That's how you end up without software.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 days ago (1 children)

That's how you end up with a secure well tested system. Having the distro do software reviews adds another level of validation. Devs are bad about shipping software with vulnerable dependencies and stuff like that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

And then you install wordpress, lol.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Loads of distros have user packing like arch and nixos... also many distors accept donations to package your software either way so my point stands even then.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Meanwhile nix install instructions start of with a curl

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 days ago (2 children)

?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

the instructions for installing on not nixos https://nixos.org/download/

[–] [email protected] -1 points 4 days ago

What part is confusing you?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

If steam accidentally deleted someone's home directory in a bash script via a single error, I doubt I would catch that one myself.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

Key being reduce. Https doesn't protect from loads of attacks. Best to verify the sig.

If its not signed, open a bug report

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Ah yes for all of the bash experts who understand what they are reading.