Date: Thu, 11 Feb 1999 15:21:18 +0100 From: Eivind Eklund <eivind@FreeBSD.ORG> To: Matthew Hunt <mph@pobox.com> Cc: phoenix@calldei.com, GReg Sutter <gsutter@pobox.com>, Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Proposal: Ignore .nofinger for root Message-ID: <19990211152118.D96008@bitbox.follo.net> In-Reply-To: <19990210074658.A10003@wopr.caltech.edu>; from Matthew Hunt on Wed, Feb 10, 1999 at 07:46:58AM -0800 References: <19990209200259.A98301@wopr.caltech.edu> <19990210082606.B58482@holly.dyndns.org> <19990210074658.A10003@wopr.caltech.edu>
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On Wed, Feb 10, 1999 at 07:46:58AM -0800, Matthew Hunt wrote: > On Wed, Feb 10, 1999 at 08:26:06AM -0600, Chris Costello wrote: > > > Yes. Why? > > Well, I thought the rationale was trivial: To provide accurate > information to the superuser. > > On further reflection, though, that the patch is poor design, > although the argument is more subtle than your argument of "why?" > or Greg Lehey's argument that using finger on a local system > is somehow perverse. > > I thought a good argument for the patch goes something like this: > The superuser has access to all of the information provided by > finger on a local system anyhow, so allowing ~/.nofinger only serves > to mislead him or make it less convenient for him to get to the > information he wants. > > However, that statement is true for all local users, not just the > superuser. Any user on the system who wanted to get around the > "protection" of ~/.nofinger could just build a new "finger" with > the hide() check removed. > > The conclusion, therefore, is that if a change were to be made, it > should be that finger(1) ignores ~/.nofinger for all local users. > The effects of such a change are more far-reaching than I feel > appropriate, so I withdraw the proposal. I consider this appropriate. I'll do this if people don't directly object; I've been fooled by this at least once, and it is inconvenient to have to use other means to get at the info. Eivind. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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