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Date:      Thu, 08 Jul 1999 00:14:32 -0700
From:      Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>
To:        Alex Zepeda <garbanzo@hooked.net>
Cc:        Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>, Keith Stevenson <k.stevenson@louisville.edu>, freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: userland ppp - startup 
Message-ID:  <199907080714.AAA01216@dingo.cdrom.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 07 Jul 1999 23:26:53 PDT." <Pine.BSF.4.05.9907072326290.315-100000@zippy.dyn.ml.org> 

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> > > What reason would the rest of the "world" have to read rc.conf?  It could
> > > only create a possible security risk.
> > 
> > This is shabby reasoning.  rc.conf contains public system configuration 
> > data, which may need to be consumed by non-root processes.
> 
> What kind of non-root program would need to consume rc.conf?

Anything that wants access to paramters stored there.  Visualise eg. a 
generic system monitoring script that checks the health of enabled 
services; any daemon running in a sandbox.  Even rc.pccard could be run 
as non-root (modulo some changes to the way that ifconfig works).

The point being that rc.conf is currently a public database, and until 
we have a better mechanism for managing parameter storage, it needs to 
stay that way.

-- 
\\  The mind's the standard       \\  Mike Smith
\\  of the man.                   \\  msmith@freebsd.org
\\    -- Joseph Merrick           \\  msmith@cdrom.com




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