Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 14:31:45 -0400 From: Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu> To: Christopher Masto <chris@netmonger.net>, Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> Cc: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>, Chuck Robey <chuckr@picnic.mat.net>, "Daniel C. Sobral" <dcs@newsguy.com>, Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@critter.freebsd.dk>, Matthew Dillon <dillon@apollo.backplane.com>, FreeBSD Hackers <hackers@FreeBSD.ORG>, FreeBSD Committers <cvs-committers@FreeBSD.ORG>, Garrett Wollman <wollman@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu> Subject: Re: Mandatory locking? Message-ID: <v0421010ab3e88df0740c@[128.113.24.47]> In-Reply-To: <19990824111703.B10650@netmonger.net> References: <19990823223645.A14001@netmonger.net> <Pine.BSF.4.10.9908232256550.49952-100000@picnic.mat.net> <19990823231130.A16133@netmonger.net> <19990824125210.A83273@freebie.lemis.com> <19990823233434.C16133@netmonger.net> <37C2ADAD.B1F19098@softweyr.com> <19990824111703.B10650@netmonger.net>
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At 11:17 AM -0400 8/24/99, Christopher Masto wrote: >I'm sure there are situations where mandatory locking accomplishes >something useful. Are they worth it? (I don't claim to know; if >the problems I thought I pointed out don't really exist, good.) > >More seriously than just being a "useless" feature, I am concerned >about the possibility of opening up security holes with mandatory >locking. BSD Unix does not currently have it.. if I understand >correctly, the kind of locking we're talking about means that if I can >get another user to read a file I own, I can make them block >indefinately. Maybe I can't do anything bad with that.. maybe I can >"only" cause a denial of service.. or maybe I can make a new race >condition in a periodic script. I am also concerned about the implementation, and about the opening of denial-of-service attacks. How about we start talking about some possible implementations, and see which ones will work the best? Your position seems to be "it is possible that a bad implementation of this might cause some security issues -- and therefore let's not do it at all, even if it might be useful". My position is that "It is useful, and demonstrated as useful on many OS's, so let us sit down and figure out a good implementation". --- Garance Alistair Drosehn = gad@eclipse.acs.rpi.edu Senior Systems Programmer or drosih@rpi.edu Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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