From: s_titz@ira.uka.de (Olaf Titz) Subject: Re: Installation: SLS vs SCO Date: 1 Apr 1993 18:12:19 GMT
In article <1993Mar31.145904.1597@coop.com> felixg@coop.com (Felix Gallo) writes:
> and solidity are extremely important. If we used, for instance, Dell's
> product, we'd have to spend quite a bit of time ripping out all those
> neat little "features" (which we would have paid for) when we set up
> a machine for the customer. You and I (in my non-working hours) might
Same problem for SLS (and if the reason is only a full disk :-)
> think that it's a crime to unbundle a compiler, but believe me, you
> don't want Joe Random User reading a book on C and seeing if
> while(1) fork(); works when you're running a "mission critical"
> application.
Excuse me for being pedantic, but at least this is no valid argument.
First, a compiler is no security problem, since a compiler does not
introduce any new features which could be holes, it is just a
convenience tool.
You don't believe me? Just create this file as ./bomb.sh, mode
rwxr-xr-x:
#/bin/sh
(sh ./bomb.sh) &
U C? while(1)fork() at shell level. (Now don't tell me it's reasonable
to ship the system without a shell by default ;-)
Second, a dedicated hacker could use even use emacs to create a binary
executable. (Followup->alt.folklore.computers :-)
Third, the handling of such situations is in the hands of the OS.
Linux has been proven very stable to abuses like the fork bomb and is
crashme-proof. (I've used the fork bomb as a stability test for Linux.
Running this program detached as user and logging out guarantees that
there is no provision left for catching these processes all at once.
But I could subsequently login as root and kill the bomb processes
with a ps-awk-kill pipe command. Takes a bit of time to execute but
the system is stable as a rock, IMHO. I don't know if this holds for
SCO too.)
> installation package for Linux, a beta OS which is free. The set of
> people who are actually wondering "should I spend $4,000 or should I
> run Linux?" in comp.os.linux is probably...quite small.
And *this* is the valid point. IMHO there's no ground for flaming up a
holy war of Linux vs SCO since the user base is (still) different, but
beware of wrong arguments.
Olaf
--
olaf titz o olaf@bigred.ka.sub.org voice@49-721-60439
comp.sc.student _>\ _ s_titz@ira.uka.de praetorius@irc
karlsruhe germany (_)<(_) uknf@dkauni2.bitnet happy linux user
what good is a photograph of you? everytime i look at it it makes me feel blue