Allow admin mode to execute onready commands with .onready files

[VL4DST3R]

I spent a shameful amount of time trying to figure out why for the love of me I could not get a known good simple .bat to work via --onready anymore. Turns out it was due to me switching to admin mode configs and (thanks AI!) that, ahem:

At lines 9732-9733 in koboldcpp.py, there's a security measure that explicitly blocks onready commands from being loaded via config files:

if "onready" in config:
    config["onready"] = "" #do not allow onready commands from config

This means the --onready parameter can only be used from the command line, not from saved configuration files.

Why is this a thing? And why is it not specifically mentioned in the wiki that it is exclusive to only those?

How to use --onready

This is an advanced parameter intended for script or command line usage. You can pass a terminal command (e.g. start a python script) to be executed after Koboldcpp has finished loading. This runs as a subprocess, and can be useful for starting cloudflare tunnels, displaying URLs etc.

[LostRuins]

This was added as a security precaution because it makes loading other people's configs potentially dangerous if you allow onready via a config file. For example, you can add an onready command to delete all files on disk, anyone loading your config will potentially get a nasty surprise.

[LostRuins]

Let's hear what @henk717 thinks. At least that was my thinking when adding it like this years ago, but maybe henk has a different opinion

[VL4DST3R]

I can see the reasoning, but an override somehow would be very much welcomed. Maybe only allow running scripts from already-present local files instead of arbitrary shell commands? Or maybe distinguishing between configs loaded from the local directory versus ones shared by others?

[wbruna]

My $0.02: yeah, it'd be too easy to create malicious configs.

Maybe it could be allowed by adding a onready_args parameter to specify arguments to the command, allow it on config files, and keep onready fixed to the command-line value (and preserved in config reloads). It would be completely inert on config files themselves, but the user could still have different scripts on different configs by changing the arguments.

[VL4DST3R]

Plus I should note, the current handling of it seems somewhat broken for me, for example with
"onready": "S:/KoboldCPP/Post-Launch.bat"
i get this when loading the config:

Please connect to custom endpoint at http://localhost:5001
Starting Post-Load subprocess...
'S' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

which is why i kept trying to tweak the parameter itself, adding cmd /c start, escaping every backslash every which way, none worked, just getting that error (or similar).

[henk717]

I'm firmly against this since that would introduce a security vulnerability in the kcpps files.
Onready is only meant to be used with manual execution.

[henk717]

@LostRuins On second thought if this is for the sake of admin mode we could reopen this if you think implementing a seperate .onready extention is a good idea.

That way it doesnt allow weaponized kcpps files but it does allow placing a seperate .onready file next to a .kcpps file with the same name to give people a path to do this. This would be manual enough to where I dont fear security.

[VL4DST3R]

I personally only need it for admin mode, so any way - however bend-over-backwards-y it may be - if that's okay with your vision, that's okay with me.

[henk717]

Reopened for now so lostruins sees it for consideration.
Updated the title since its now a request for .onready files rather than an insecure change to .kcpps.

[VL4DST3R]

Hey just so you know, I believe I found a workaround to get onready to still execute via config reload in current latest build. It's super late here but will document my findings tomorrow. I'm guessing this is not intended behavior, right?

[henk717]

That should never happen indeed.
Feel free to share but ideally privately, if you have discord join https://koboldai.org/discord and DM concedo or me (Blue nicknames with an admin role).