Re: UUIDs (and devfs and major/minor numbers)
H. Peter Anvin (hpa@transmeta.com)
Fri, 18 Jun 1999 00:14:23 -0700
Dan Hollis wrote:
>
> On Fri, 18 Jun 1999, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> > Dan Hollis wrote:
> > > If you start playing around with device names, expect severe application
> > > breakage.
> > > Or maybe you have some interesting justification to start renaming
> > > /dev/tty* into other things?
> > > Or lets rename /dev/null on a whim and see how useful that is.
> > You totally don't get it, do you? First of all, there is the
> > permissions issue.
>
> Devfs works with permissions.
>
> > Second of all, say I have a device called, say /dev/keyboard. Now I
> > want to simulate keyboard input with a user-space process, or redirect
> > the keyboard input from say, a serial port. That's what a level of
> > indirection is for.
>
> Devfs also works with symlinks.
>
> Device names might not be hardcoded in the kernel, but they are more or
> less hardcoded by conventional usage by end user applications. May not be
> proper but thats simply the way it is.
>
> So I will re-iterate since you didnt get it the first time.
>
> Being able to arbitrarily change device names as "justification" for
> keeping the current /dev and rejecting devfs, is not as important or as
> useful as you make it out to be because:
>
> 1) you can also symlink devfs.
> 2) devfs still has permissions.
>
Yes, and they go away every time, completely nullifying the utility. In
short, YES YOU CAN DO IT. It's no longer a clean solution, but nothing
but a gross hack.
-hpa
--
"The user's computer downloads the ActiveX code and simulates a 'Blue
Screen' crash, a generally benign event most users are familiar with
and that would not necessarily arouse suspicions."
-- Security exploit description on http://www.zks.net/p3/how.asp
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