[Off Topic] Re: Linux security

[Jim Richardson]

On Sat, 2006-05-06 at 11:50 +0800, Michael Richter wrote:
> On 05/05/06, Peter Garrett <peter.garrett at optusnet.com.au> wrote:
>         On Fri, 5 May 2006 13:42:52 +0800
>         "Michael Richter" <ttmrichter at gmail.com> wrote:
>         
>         > cd /
>         > <enter a string of commands here and, in the process, forget
>         where you are> 
>         > rm -fR * .old
>         >
>         > What was that about "sane defaults" and "graceful error
>         recovery" that
>         > someone else was blathering on about again?  There's not so
>         much as a "are
>         > you sure you want to kill your system?"-style error message
>         there.  The
>         > "sane default" is to trash your whole file system.  From a
>         moment's
>         > inattention.
>         
>         Quite true. Of course if the user concerned is using Ubuntu,
>         and has not 
>         enabled a root password, it becomes less likely (not
>         impossible by any
>         means, just less likely).
> 
> sudo -s
> <enter password>
> cd /
> <do a lot of stuff>
> rm -fR * .old
> 
> Or, for that matter, as you pointed out, just do it in your home
> directory as yourself.  As was pointed out before users don't care
> about system files (which are semi-trivial to replace).  They care
> about user files.  And the "sane default" and "graceful failure" of
> UNIX systems is to trash everything without so much as a "are you sure
> about this?" -- something that DOS did in its first incarnation!
> 

That's not the default, if it was the default, you wouldn't need the -f
flag. you *told* it to not bother you with questions, to just do it. 


Since the shell has been "hidden" behind a couple of menus now, it's not
something that the newbie is likely to see, without someone pointing it
out. Much like OSX. With much the same mechanism (OSX also uses a sudo
model)  




-- 
Jim Richardson <warlock at eskimo.com>
Erisian Claw