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Date:      Tue, 21 Sep 1999 07:08:48 -0700 (PDT)
From:      Brian Beattie <beattie@aracnet.com>
To:        John-Mark Gurney <gurney_j@resnet.uoregon.edu>
Cc:        Julian Elischer <julian@whistle.com>, "Matthew N. Dodd" <winter@jurai.net>, Chuck Robey <chuckr@mat.net>, Wayne Cuddy <wayne@crb-web.com>, FreeBSD Hackers List <freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: what is devfs?
Message-ID:  <Pine.LNX.4.10.9909210659150.24631-100000@shell2.aracnet.com>
In-Reply-To: <19990921000009.54622@hydrogen.fircrest.net>

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On Tue, 21 Sep 1999, John-Mark Gurney wrote:

> Julian Elischer scribbled this message on Sep 20:
> > > POLA!  if we have persisten permissions and ownership, and we allow
> > > renaming, then renaming should also be persistant...  after the mount
> > > again, da0c either no longer exists, or is no longer ttyd1... which
> > > neither is an acceptable solution...
> > 
> > I think at this stage you've gone overboard..
> > 
> > part of the definition of devfs is that a device shows up on mount
> > with it's canonical name.. On each new mount every time, even if you've
> > mounted it in 10 different places.
> 
> I didn't flat out state it, but I think persistant should NOT be done
> via an underlying node, but via a daemon... and then this would be a
> moot point as you'd just configure the daemon to do what you need to
> do, or run an /etc/rc.devfs script which sets the permission properly..
>
I distrust the complexity of daemons in this case, for something as
important as device permissions.
 
> that is all I'm looking for... anything else is stupid or complex...
>
Stupid, is that a technical term?
 
> hell, a daemon could be something as simple as a script that constantly
> sees if a device has root:wheel 0600 permissions, and set them correctly
> if they don't...
> 
Security controlled by a script, Yikes!

> persitance is stupid UNLESS it is complete persitance... and you've said
Why?  Is this a technical judgment, or personal prejudice?

> that complete persitance is to complex, so lets go w/ no persitance, and
> default secure premissions...
> 
Because initial security (boot time) is important, and complex solutions
are prone to holes.  Another daemon, is yet one more process, sucking up
resources, prone to attack.  If I can hack your devfsd, I can give myself
permissions to do anything to your system.

Brian Beattie            | The only problem with
beattie@aracnet.com      | winning the rat race ...
www.aracnet.com/~beattie | in the end you're still a rat



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