Date: Sat, 4 Oct 1997 21:38:03 -0600 (MDT) From: Wes Peters <softweyr@xmission.com> To: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au> Cc: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Microsoft brainrot (was: r-cmds and DNS and /etc/host.conf) Message-ID: <199710050338.VAA07197@obie.softweyr.ml.org> In-Reply-To: <199709301309.WAA00520@word.smith.net.au> References: <199709301226.OAA22862@bitbox.follo.net> <199709301309.WAA00520@word.smith.net.au>
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Mike Smith writes:
> >
> > I'd much rather send my root password (over SSL) - that way, I can at
> > least use S/Key.
>
> What's the smallest available secure HTTP server you know of? Anyone?
Mine. (Soon to be secure.) The current FreeBSD version, written as
several C++ classes, weighs in at about 8K of code (minus the libraries,
of course). I'd guess that by the time I get secure mode added, it will
be in the 20 - 24 K range. Is that reasonable?
BTW, I've never written for SSL before, and don't even have it installed
on this machine. So take everything I said with a largish grain of
salt, right? ;^)
> > However, if we're going to use Java anyway, there are lots of crypto
> > we could use - but will this be the easiest way of implementing the
> > interface?
>
> IMHO Java may be a lose, unless we can come up with a 'legacy'
> interface for the terminal addicts and people with non-Java browsers.
I agree; I was thinking more of sticking to forms, and ones supported by
Lynx at that. I haven't researched Lynx enough lately, so I'll have to
go take a look. Fortunately, one of the groups that is maintaining Lynx
is located about a half mile from where I work, and I used to teach
there. I can probably find out pretty quickly. ;^)
As far as this high-flying Java/JavaScript/Tcl/etc discussion: at Dayna,
we purposefully chose to do our interface to be visually interesting and
to push the edge of technology. We have active database-linked HTML,
server side includes, server push, Java applets, JavaScript, and
compiled-in CGIs in our user interface. THIS WAS NOT AN EASY SOLUTION
TO THE PROBLEM! As I said before, we had several full time engineers, a
full time experienced webmaster, and two dedicated graphical artists
spend MONTHS on this. And this user interface is much smaller, perhaps
two orders of magnitude smaller, than FreeBSD would require. GIVE IT
UP, THIS JUST ISN'T GOING TO HAPPEN!
My idea was to keep the user interface, at least for ANY sort of browser
tool, pretty simple. It is a straightforward task to product a server
that can fill in and rewrite named variables in a database, text file,
or whatever; the HTML source file can fill in whatever instructions
and/or explanatory text needs to be added to instruct the user on the
significance of this variable. Picture this as a sort of on-line
rc.conf with the HTML containing the "comments" and the forms part
containing the "variables." You can, of course, do some pretty complex
things on the server side also, since you have the ability to exec any
command on the system by writing a compiled-in CGI, but that really
impacts the extensability and maintainability of the project.
--
"Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?"
Wes Peters Softweyr LLC
http://www.xmission.com/~softweyr softweyr@xmission.com
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