10 Jan
2014
10 Jan
'14
1:41 a.m.
Yep, but where did the user base from PWB come from? They were
existing professional programmers from the mainframe world, still
writing for the mainframe, now sumbmitting via UNIX RJE.
Where did the sysadmins of PWB that added these users come from?
Same answer. If users are not added into the right groups, and
the users don't know (or need, care, or be able change) groups,
they don't get implemented properly.
And if you don't have gids, want to collaborate, and are discouraged
from copying, you need to do a ton of chown()s
From: Larry McVoy <lm(a)bitmover.com>
Now you are going to say this could all be done
with proper use of group ids
and group permissions. I agree, but in practice it was not done
Bzzt. We have a solution, they should have used it.
10 Jan
10 Jan
1:17 p.m.
New subject: History of chown semantics
Recall that in those days, "systems administrator" was an entry level,
minimum wage job. Most worked third shift, and their primary duties were
to mount and dismount disc backup tapes. Those people who actually did
administration in the sense we think of it were greatly underpaid and
disrespected. The next decade or two, particularly with networking,
caused a huge change. The Usenix LISA conferences did a lot to raise
consciousness that there was a real there there.
Yep, but where did the user base from PWB come from?
They were
existing professional programmers from the mainframe world, still
writing for the mainframe, now sumbmitting via UNIX RJE.
Where did the sysadmins of PWB that added these users come from?
Same answer. If users are not added into the right groups, and
the users don't know (or need, care, or be able change) groups,
they don't get implemented properly.
And if you don't have gids, want to collaborate, and are discouraged
from copying, you need to do a ton of chown()s
From: Larry McVoy <lm(a)bitmover.com>
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Now you are going to say this could all be done
with proper use of
group ids
and group permissions. I agree, but in practice
it was not done
Bzzt. We have a solution, they should have used it.
2:03 p.m.
New subject: History of chown semantics
Boy, I'm amazed at the controversy here. Yeah, I thought the feature was odd when
it appeared, but it's not nearly as bizarre as the perils of allowing random users to
mount disks (we hacked our mostly V6 kernel at JHU to disable setuid on mounted disks) or
the fact that non-privileged users could invoke setuid/setgid (managed to exploit a few
bugs here in the day).
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2 comments
3 participants
participants (3)
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Brian S Walden -
Ronald Natalie -
scj＠yaccman.com