> And what user owns the floppy ? Everybody who is logged in?
> Can anybody write to it? Can everybody write to it.
>
> It the user who put the floppy in the drive stores some sensitive
> data (X.509 certificates come to mind) who can read it?.
For a certain fraction of machines, this issue makes a difference.
But on most machines, it is never an issue. It is never an issue for
personal machines, and it is not an issue for people whose data is not
that terribly sensitive.
If a feature can be implemented in a way that suits all these kinds
of situations, well and good. But if the only way we can implement
the feature is good only for the machines where secrecy from the
other users or the other people in the area is not crucial,
we should not reject it on account of the minority who won't find
it satisfactory. After all, the feature will not make them any
worse off than they are now.
I have always been annoyed by the default of mode 600 for /dev/fd0.
I've been screwed by it, when I needed to use the floppy on someone
else's machine and I did not have the root password and he was
temporarily not there. But I don't think I have ever been on a
machine where this restriction did anyone any good. I am not saying
that none exist, only that they are a small fraction. And those
machines, being shared, probably have more experienced sysadmins than
a personal machine.
So the default should be chosen for personal machines, and people who
want to block access to the floppy can do so.
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jun 23 2000 - 21:00:21 EST