RE: FW: gnome

["Fox, Kevin M" <kmfox bhi010 bhi-erc com>]

Well as to how old VFS is it dosn't matter much because thare are not many
programs that take advantage of it. As far as I know only programs that take
advantage of libvfs is mc, gnome and kde. As to ftp and tar files, I would
love to be able to mount these and use them with all programs. The only way
to do this is to let the kernel do its job and have the filesystem in the
kernel or have it be an NFS server. The NFS server is better in this
situation because it works on closed sorced oses. 

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Adam Cutchin [SMTP:adam@oop.com]
> Sent:	Thursday, December 10, 1998 12:44 PM
> To:	Gnome List (E-mail)
> Subject:	RE: FW: gnome
> 
> Fox, Kevin M wrote:
> >As to why should it be in the kernel. It is the kernels job. Writeing a
> VFS
> >library requires programs to be spacificly programmed for it and it
> bypasses
> >security. The reason why normal users cant mount is because of security.
> If
> >you go around that it can be a really bad thing. Root MUST be able to
> >restrict filesystems. Root MUST be able to say what user can do what.
> >Implamenting libvfs as an NFS server allows root to control who can do
> what
> >and removes the need for a program to be modified to use the libvfs
> library.
> 
> You would seem to be vastly widening the scope of what VFS actually
> does.
> 
> We're talking about ftp sites and tar files.  (At least for the time
> being.)
> If the root doesn't want you to open a tar file it's a pretty trivial task
> to
> deny you read rights to it.  If the root doesn't want you to access an
> ftp site he can set that up at the firewall, I suppose though I would
> imagine
> it would be more the job of that particular locations administrators to
> limit
> who has access.
> 
> If a library that allows programs to do either of those functions is all
> it
> takes to bypass security, I think we have far greater problems on our
> hands than VFS.
> 
> By the way, can anyone tell me how old VFS is?  It seems odd to
> devote this much bandwidth to something that has been in place for quite
> a while.  Shall we rewrite Midnight Commander because you feel that it's
> ability to tar and ftp is a security risk?
> 
> If you want a NFS-VFS wrapper, I don't think anyone would discourage
> you from writing it.
> 
> 
> -- 
>         FAQ: Frequently-Asked Questions at http://www.gnome.org/gnomefaq
>          To unsubscribe: mail gnome-list-request@gnome.org with 
>                        "unsubscribe" as the Subject.