Re: what's next for the linux kernel?

[Marc Perkel <marc@perkel.com>]

Bodo Eggert wrote:

> Marc Perkel <marc@perkel.com> wrote:
>
> [...]
>  
>
> > I'll run through a few ideas here.
> >    
>
>  
>
> > Novell Netware type permissions. ACLs are a step in the right direction
> > but Linux isn't any where near where Novell was back in 1990. Linux lets
> > you - for example - to delete files that you have no read or write
> > access rights to.
> >    
>
> It lets you unlink them. That's different from deleting, since the owner
> may have his/her private link to that file.
>
> Unlinking is changing the contents of a directory, and it's controlled by
> the write permission of the containing directory.
>
>  
There would be different rights to eack link.

> > Netware on the other hand prevents you from deleting
> > files that you can't write to and if you have no right it is as if the
> > file isn't there.
> >    
>
> Imagine a /tmp directory (writable by world) with user "a" creating a file
> "foo", umask=077 and user "b" trying to do the same. User "b" will get
> 'file exists' if he tries to create it, and 'file does not exist' if he
> tries to list it. He will go nuts.
>  
Users should have private temp directory space. Two user trying to 
create the same file in the same directory isn't going to work under any 
operating system.

> BTW: YANI: That about a tmpfs where all-numerical entries can only be
> created by the corresponding UID? This would provide a secure, private
> tmp directory to each user without the possibility of races and denial-of-
> service attacks. Maybe it should be controlled by a mount flag.
>
>  
>
> > You can't even see it in the directory. Netware also
> > has inherited permissions like Windows and Samba has and this is doing
> > it right.
> >    
>
> You can't do that if you have hardlinks. However, I missed the feature of
> overruling file permissions in some special directories, e.g. anything
> put under /pub should ignore umask and be a+rX.
>  
You have to realize the Netware does things differently and that Linux 
limitations don't apply to Netware.

>  
>
> > File systems and individual directories should be able to be
> > flagged as casesensitive/insensitive.
> >    
>
> IMHO not needed.
>  
But just because you don't need it doesn't mean other people don't. If 
you are running Samba pretending to be a case insensitive file system 
then this is a good feature.

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