From owner-freebsd-questions Sat May 5 1:35:47 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from guru.mired.org (okc-65-26-235-186.mmcable.com [65.26.235.186]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id CD13537B424 for ; Sat, 5 May 2001 01:35:44 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mwm@mired.org) Received: (qmail 30850 invoked by uid 100); 5 May 2001 08:35:44 -0000 From: Mike Meyer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <15091.47968.87497.359437@guru.mired.org> Date: Sat, 5 May 2001 03:35:44 -0500 To: "David Schwartz" Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: RE: tail In-Reply-To: References: X-Mailer: VM 6.90 under 21.1 (patch 14) "Cuyahoga Valley" XEmacs Lucid X-face: "5Mnwy%?j>IIV\)A=):rjWL~NB2aH[}Yq8Z=u~vJ`"(,&SiLvbbz2W`;h9L,Yg`+vb1>RG% *h+%X^n0EZd>TM8_IB;a8F?(Fb"lw'IgCoyM.[Lg#r\ Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG David Schwartz types: > > > :: On Unix, it's generally more important to make sure the user can shoot > > :: anything they want than it is to keep the user from shooting > > :: themselves in the foot. > > > > In that case, tail should cause a kernel panic if you try to run it on a > > directory. If you really want to wallow in pendantry, please remember that > > "shooting yourself in the foot" isn't the right metaphor in this context. > > > > -- Juha > > In fact, this argument can justify any harmful behavior that can be easily > averted by system sanity checks, provided that the harm is known. How about > if on an unknown command, the shell does an 'rm -rf ~'? Why stop the user > from shooting themselves in the foot? Because you're missing the *first* half of the argument - it's more important to make sure the user can shoot anything they want". Making the consequences worse than they need to be doesn't do anything to further the users cause. http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message