/var/ossec path is hardcoded in several places

[evan2645]

Sometimes it is required for ossec to be installed in a non-standard location, such as /opt/ossec. This can be done by setting USER_DIR in preloaded-vars.conf prior to configuring/compiling.

The problem is that there are a couple locations in which the /var/ossec path is hardcoded, and does not obey the USER_DIR configuration variable. I'm including a summary of the instances I was able to find below.

bin/util.sh
bin/ossec-batch-manager.pl

[jrossi]

This a large problem and something we need to fix, but this is going to require a fair amount of changes over a lot of code. But saying that its a problem that we plan to address.

[awiddersheim]

The two files referenced in the original issue:

bin/util.sh
bin/ossec-batch-manager.pl

These are contrib files. They don't really get compiled and installed in the same way much of the C code does. I haven't really found anywhere in the C code where paths are hard coded but I don't doubt that they exist.

You could fix this semi easily by changing these two contrib files to having a default path hard coded as a single variable but then have install.sh use sed to replace the paths somewhere around here:

https://github.com/ossec/ossec-hids/blob/master/install.sh#L757

Not the greatest solution ever but since OSSEC doesn't really make use of the typical Make, automake, configure style solution most other projects do this might be the best option for now. Either that or we say they are contrib files and aren't fully supported in this fashion.

[mstarks01]

I have a fix for util.sh but need to back out a different commit before I submit a pull request.

[awiddersheim]

@mstarks01 sounds like you were close to having a PR for this. Any update?

[mstarks01]

#237

[jrossi]

Completed in #237