On 19/05/2011 05:03 PM, Darren New wrote:
> On 5/19/2011 8:41, Invisible wrote:
>> No. But if you can take ownership of a file, you can give yourself
>> permission to access it, even if you didn't have that permission to start
>> with. In other words, it allows you to bypass ACLs.
>
> Sure, but then you own the file. I.e., you get caught. :-) And you can't
> put it back the way it was, either.

Well, yeah, if you're worried about catching people, turn on file access 
auditing. (Something else which, AFAIK, Linux doesn't have.) I'm just 
saying people with this priviledge can access stuff they shouldn't be 
able to look at.

>> Still not really seeing why you need this implemented at the filesystem
>> level, but yeah...
>
> You don't *need* anything at all at the filesystem level. You don't need
> directories, or locking, or ACLs. FORTH works fine without any of that.
>
> That said, there's a benefit to having everyone use the same
> abstractions by building them into the file system. When they're baked
> into the OS, everyone does it the same way (so they're compatible) and
> nobody needs to have code to deal with it in every application. The idea
> that "we don't need that in the OS because we can implement it again and
> again in every application that needs it" (especially when it's very
> close to every application that needs it) is a broken philosophy.

Fair enough. For example, under Linux there are apparently at least 3 
different [incompatible] ways to access the sound hardware. Isn't that 
wonderful?

>> Do overlays matter any more? (Clearly they did once...)
>
> Not unless you're using a machine that can't handle demand paging.
> Relatively few such machines nowadays don't have enough RAM to run
> everything at once, but there are still some around. Stuff like credit
> card terminals, for example.

Right. So for desktop computers it's a non-issue?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
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