Subject: Linux-Development Digest #239
From: Digestifier <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 28 Sep 94 20:13:13 EDT

Linux-Development Digest #239, Volume #2         Wed, 28 Sep 94 20:13:13 EDT

Contents:
  Re: Where's my corefile? (Anselm Lingnau)
  Re: Linux/FreeBSD ISDN support (Jay Ashworth)
  Re: Alpha Linux (James Lewis Nance)
  mount/umount bug (/etc/mtab~) (Andre Fachat)
  HPFS read/write (Joerg Wedeck)
  Re: [STATUS] Linus Floppy Driver Development (Matthew S. Crocker)
  More ELF. (MacGyver)
  Is clock() broken in gcc (Riku Saikkonen)
  Re: Obsolete route request made!? (Tony Gale)
  PCMIA support? ([email-masked])
  Re: Alpha Linux
  Re: mount/umount bug (/etc/mtab~) (Bernd Eckenfels)
  Re: Memory in 1.1.50: What is data? (Peter Suetterlin)
  Re: OpenGL Extensions to X server? (Robert Stockmann)
  [QUESTION] Linux terminal control (Walter Thompson)
  Re: mmap and MAP_SHARED? (David Miller)
  Re: ISODE (C.W. Southern)
  Re: ISODE (Andreas Zisowsky)
  Ftape bombed my system with 66MHz CPU (cont.) (Alberto Vignani)
  Re: UltraStor SCSI errors was Re: Future of Ultrastore support (Hanks Bryan)
  Smail Security Hole (Yermo Lamers)
  Re: [STATUS] Linus Floppy Driver Development (Anselm Lingnau)
  SOLUTION Re: SMail security hole? (Patrick Schaaf)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Anselm Lingnau <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Where's my corefile?
Date: 28 Sep 1994 14:09:40 +0100

In article <[email-masked]>,
Todd Klaus <[email-masked]> wrote:

> I'm getting segmentation faults, but no (core dumped)!  I looked in 
> /etc/profile and ~/.profile thinking this was a shell thing, but found 
> nothing.  How do I enable corefiles?  I'm using the Yggdrasil summer '94 CD.

It seems you have limited the coredump size to 0, i.e., no core dumps will
be written. Say something like

        limit coredumpsize unlimited

to enable coredumps. The exact command depends on the shell you're using.

Anselm
-- 
Anselm Lingnau ......................... [email-masked]
Emacs is a fine operating system, but I still prefer UNIX. --- Tom Christiansen

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Jay Ashworth)
Crossposted-To: comp.dcom.isdn,mn.general,comp.os.linux.misc,umn.net-lists.linux-activists
Subject: Re: Linux/FreeBSD ISDN support
Date: 27 Sep 1994 21:31:25 -0400

[email-masked] (Neal Dalton) writes:
>I called Digiboard about there ISDN board and asked if they supported
>Linux or FreeBSD.  They told that they didn't support either, so I them
>why did not support and they told me they had seen the demand for it.
>They where planning on a SCO driver.

Calm down, Neal.... calm down.

One of Digi's employees is currently at work on a PC/Xe driver for Linux,
with release due in a month or two.  I suspect he's listening, and when
they ask him what's next, he'll say "ISDN".  :-)

Cheers,
-- jr 'right, Troy' a
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth        High Technology Systems Comsulting             Ashworth
Designer              Linux: The Choice of a GNU Generation       & Associates
ka1fjx/4                                                  
[email-masked]   "Hey! Do any of you guys know how to Madison?"  813 790 7592

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (James Lewis Nance)
Subject: Re: Alpha Linux
Date: 28 Sep 1994 11:08:31 GMT
Reply-To: [email-masked] (James Lewis Nance)

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] (Jay Ashworth) writes:
> 
> Forgive me...
> 
> there are _two_ ports underway to the same chip??
> 
> (I believe it was in a post from Jim Paradis, which would mean DEC, but I
> don't remember for sure.)

I believe that there are 2 people working on 1 port.

Jim Nance

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Andre Fachat)
Subject: mount/umount bug (/etc/mtab~)
Date: 28 Sep 1994 11:24:47 GMT

Hi there!

I suudenly came up with a problem concerning mount/umount.
When a mount fails, it leaves a file /etc/mtab~ and with
this it prevents any other mount/umount command to run at all.

As I understand this is a kind of semaphore to avoid multiple
mounts to run the same time, at least in normal use.

But when I get something like "Device Busy..." or so,
I find out that, e.g. I didn't put a floppy to the drive or a typo,
and try again, then mount fails because of /etc/mtab~.

Is this a bug or a feature?

Andre

--
Andre Fachat              mail me!             [email-masked]
For some it is MS-Windows, for others it's the longest batch file on earth...

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Joerg Wedeck)
Subject: HPFS read/write
Date: 27 Sep 1994 09:11:52 GMT

Hi,

sorry for my ignorance, does there exist a patch for the HPFS file
system which enables linux to mount these OS/2 partitions read
AND write ?

If so, where can I find this patch ?

Thanx for your help,

        Joerg

--
==================================+======================================
Joerg Wedeck                      | E-Mail: [email-masked]\
Universitaet Tuebingen            |             .uni-tuebingen.de
Lehrstuhl fuer Techn. Informatik  |
Sand 13                           |
72076 Tuebingen                   |
Germany                           |
==================================+======================================
       Deswegen bin ich ja Optio, und Du nur Legionaer :-)
========================================================================+

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Matthew S. Crocker)
Subject: Re: [STATUS] Linus Floppy Driver Development
Date: 28 Sep 1994 16:51:46 GMT

Steve Davies ([email-masked]) wrote:
: In article <[email-masked]>, Alain Knaff <[email-masked]> wrote:
: > Yes, but what we need to know is not when the floppy has been
: >changed, but rather when it is inserted. The DISK CHANGE LINE is set
: >when the floppy is _removed_ not when it is inserted. It is cleared
: >when a disk is in the drive _and_ a seek is done. Thus, in order to
: >detect a disk _insertion_ the drive has to be seeked endlessly. If the
: >period of the poll is too small, the noise gets annoying, if it is too
: >long the feature gets useless.

: You sound like you know what you are talking about,  but...

: Acorn's Archimedes A300 series machines had a 3 1/2 drive with a
: disk change line.

So does Fastback for DOS,  the drive light is *not* on all the time
but it can tell when you insert the next volume (I think).  There must
be a way somehow...

-Matt

--
-Matthew S Crocker               "The mask, given time, comes
[email-masked]              to be the face itself."  -anonymous
*OS/2*OS/2*OS/2*OS/2*OS/2*OS/2*OS/2*OS/2*OS/2*OS/2*OS/2*OS/2*OS/2*OS/2*OS/2*
 *linux*linux*linux*linux*linux*linux*linux*linux*linux*linux*linux*linux*

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (MacGyver)
Subject: More ELF.
Date: 26 Sep 1994 13:19:39 -0500

Hi,

I've been watching these discussions about ELF vs a.out with quite a
bit of interest.  It looks, at least to me, like things will be moving
toward ELF.  Who actually decides if this happens and if so when it
happens?  What does Linus have to say about it?  If this does take
place, does this mean that EVERYTHING must be recompiled for ELF? (I
understand that both formats will be supported, but, if we're moving
to ELF then I, personally, would want to use the 'preferred' medium)
Just how big is this project going to be if its implemented?  It'd be
nice if the hard work that all the developers have done didn't have to
be recompiled or rewritten.

HJD.

------------------------------

Subject: Is clock() broken in gcc
From: [email-masked] (Riku Saikkonen)
Date: Wed, 28 Sep 94 19:00:00 +0200

>Does anyone know of any problems with clock() in gcc 2.5.8?
>CLK_TCK is reported as being 100, so 100 ticks per second.  The output
>from the above code always indicates that clock() is returning the same
>value the second time it is called as the first time (usually 2 or 3),
>even when I wait several seconds before pressing return.

clock() displays the _processor time_ used by the program. This is
completely different from the real time of the system (try 'time -v ls'
or something from your prompt); try gettimeofday() for the accurate real
time...

By the way, this is a standard way of doing things, not a peculiarity
of Linux. From what I know, only MS-DOS displays the real time using
clock() (obviously since it's single-tasking...).

-=- Rjs -=- [email-masked] - IRC: Rjs
"For still there are so many things / that I have never seen: /
in every wood in every spring / there is a different green." - Tolkien

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Tony Gale)
Subject: Re: Obsolete route request made!?
Date: 28 Sep 1994 15:03:42 GMT

Carlos Antunes ([email-masked]) wrote:
: Hello, fellow linuxers!

: After installing kernel 1.1.45, when starting, I receive a warning saying
: 'obsolete route request made'. Well, I removed the command 
: 'route add 127.0.0.1' form rc.inet1 and the warning disapears, but cannot
: telnet localhost, because there is no route info. What's up?

: Thanx!

: Regards,
: Carlos Antunes.
: -- 
: Carlos Antunes @ SoftSousa               Developing for 32bit MS Windows(tm)      
: Voice: 351-1-3975303                        Windows NT(tm) and "Chicago"
: Fax  : 351-1-3975889                     Console, GUI or Kernel Mode Drivers 

Get a newer version of the program route.
--
   
Tony Gale                 |        Stop whinging and start Wine'ing
[email-masked]  |  http://daedalus.dra.hmg.gb/gale/wine/wine.html

                  | All opinions expressed are my own |

------------------------------

From: [email-masked]
Subject: PCMIA support?
Date: 28 Sep 1994 15:44:06 -0400
Reply-To: [email-masked]

Date: Wed, 28 Sep 1994 21:45:52 +0000
From: Andre Couture <[email-masked]>
Subject: PCMIA support?
To: "comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc" <[email-masked]>, 
    "comp.os.linux.help" <[email-masked]>, 
    "comp.os.linux.development" <[email-masked]>, 
    "comp.os.linux.admin" <[email-masked]>
Message-ID: <Pine.3.89.9409282141.A18787-0100000@cYborg>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

I'm looking on information about PCMCIA support for Linux.

I am mostly interested in network and modems,

Does anyone working on PCMCIA drivers for Linux?

=======

Second question is about S-VGA drivers, is there or will be a 'generic' 
one supported in 640x480x256? or/and the LINEAR chips set.?

This is for a AST Advantage! Explorer Notebook, I've (mostly) converted 
my notebook as a Linux ws. But until I can fully support network and 
decent video display, I'll have to keep Windog :-) around!

Please reply to me directly, (as well.)

regards,

Andre Couture

=====
Andre Couture,
[email-masked] (preferred)

     _/_/_/_/  _/_/_/_/  _/_/_/_/       Centre Informatique Couture
    _/           _/     _/             (div. of 938934 Ontario Inc.)
   _/           _/     _/       938934 Ontario Inc.  Phone: +1-613-762-0262
  _/           _/     _/        155 Queen St.        FAX:   +1-819-775-9697
 _/           _/     _/         Suite 900            Roma:  +39/6-5125-745
_/_/_/_/. _/_/_/_/. _/_/_/_/.   Ottawa, Ontario      Delphi:     CoutureA

@receiver file

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] ()
Subject: Re: Alpha Linux
Date: 28 Sep 1994 20:32:34 GMT

James Lewis Nance ([email-masked]) wrote:

: In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] (Jay Ashworth) writes:
: > 
: > Forgive me...
: > 
: > there are _two_ ports underway to the same chip??
: > 
: > (I believe it was in a post from Jim Paradis, which would mean DEC, but I
: > don't remember for sure.)

: I believe that there are 2 people working on 1 port.

: Jim Nance

The way I understand it, having talked with some of the people involved
second hand.  The DEC fellow has done/is doing his own port, while Linus
is working on something seperate.  However some of this information is
second hand to me so accuracy may be somewhat lacking.

Jonathan Smith

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Bernd Eckenfels)
Subject: Re: mount/umount bug (/etc/mtab~)
Date: 28 Sep 1994 20:26:41 GMT

Davor Jadrijevic ([email-masked]) wrote:
: : Is this a bug or a feature?

: Did anybody consider doing mounts with my /proc/mtab ?
: Maybe it can completely avoid such mtab~ etc problems.
Well, I think there should be an locking mechanism included (like
opening /proc/mtab exclusively).

BTW: i would see some usermount support in /proc/mtab, by including
the real-uid of the person who has mounted an fs.

Greetings
Bernd
--
  (OO)        --  [email-masked]  --
 ( .. )    +4972573817   [email-masked]   [email-masked]
  o--o            *QUAK* Jetzt auch mit Plueschtier in der .Sig!  
(O____O)   <A href=http://rzstud1.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de/~ukd1/>Eckes@IRC</A>

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Peter Suetterlin)
Subject: Re: Memory in 1.1.50: What is data?
Date: 28 Sep 1994 13:25:28 GMT

Dick Streefland ([email-masked]) wrote:
: Peter Suetterlin ([email-masked]) wrote:

: --> Memory: 12956k/16384k available (624k kernel code, 384k reserved, 2420k data)

: I bet you use the BusLogic SCSI driver, because I got the same

 Correct

 ......

: patch is so small, I will include it here:

: --- linux/drivers/scsi/scsi.c-org     Fri Aug 12 22:02:23 1994
: +++ linux/drivers/scsi/scsi.c Sat Sep 10 01:36:45 1994
: @@ -1803,7 +1803,7 @@
:                              host->hostt->cmd_per_lun;
:         
:         if(host->unchecked_isa_dma &&
: -          memory_end > ISA_DMA_THRESHOLD &&
: +          memory_end - 1 > ISA_DMA_THRESHOLD &&
:            SDpnt->type != TYPE_TAPE) {
:           dma_sectors += (PAGE_SIZE >> 9) * host->sg_tablesize *
:             host->hostt->cmd_per_lun;

: When you have more than 16 Mb of memory, the additional buffers will
: still be allocated: 1 Mb for each non-tape device in the case of the
: BusLogic driver! It seems to me that this amount of buffers is too much,
: even with more than 16 Mb of memory. However, I am not too familiar with
: the SCSI driver, so I don't know whether this number of buffers is
: really necessary.

Yep, it works (I have 16MB). Now i get 15000k available 8^)
Thanks a *LOT*

   Peter

==================   Peter 'PIT' Suetterlin   =================
|   Kiepenheuer Institut     |   Sternfreunde Breisgau e.V    |
|   fuer Sonnenphysik        |                                |
|   0761/3198-210            |   0761/71571                   |
-<[email-masked]>-<[email-masked]>--

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Robert Stockmann)
Subject: Re: OpenGL Extensions to X server?
Date: Wed, 28 Sep 1994 20:29:33 GMT

In <[email-masked]>, Jim Callahan ([email-masked]) wrote:
: Anyone working on extending the XFree86 server to handle OpenGL calls?

: With several fast 3D hardware PC cards comming out soon which support OpenGL in
: their instruction set, it would be very nice to have a GL/X server under Linux.
: With this done, Linux users could get the benifit of the OpenInventor 3D OOP
: toolkit and tons of GL apps...

: I've seen OpenGL running on all of the more traditional UNIX platforms and even
: the dreaded NT and Mac will be supprting it soon.  Wouldn't want uncle Bill to
: beat the Linux community on this one...  ;^]

Yes it would certainly be nice! Then you could use your Linux -box
as GL/X11 terminal for those SGI and IBM machines. Ive tried to
get an SGI GL appliction to run with vogle but this package
(although very nice) lacks about 90% of the true GL lib functions.

support for OpenGL would make Linux *the* ultimate UNIX.

Robert

--
++-------------------------++------------------------------------------++
|| R.M. Stockmann          ||   Delft University of Technology         ||
|| [email-masked] ||   Department of Chemical Engineering     ||
|| phone: +31 15  784395   ||   Section Industrial Catalysis           ||
|| home:  +31 1620 36177   ||   Julianalaan 136                        ||
|| fax:   +31 17  784452   ||   2628 BL Delft  The Netherlands         ||
++-------------------------++------------------------------------------++

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Walter Thompson)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help
Subject: [QUESTION] Linux terminal control
Date: 28 Sep 1994 14:37:53 -0500

Hello all,
        The school I work at is interested in getting linux installed.  They
would like to be able to use it in CS classes if there is a way for the
instructor to access a students terminal (via ethernet or the student can be
logged into the instructors linux box), so the instructor can take over the
students terminal and help the student with programming or whatever
problems.  After the instructor shows the student what is wrong, the
instructor turns the terminal back over to the student.  Is there anything
like this out there? If so can it control a screen under dosemu?  Please
reply with any information you may have via email or post.

Thank you,
Walt  ([email-masked])

ANY AND ALL INFORMATION/LEADS APPRECIATED!

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (David Miller)
Subject: Re: mmap and MAP_SHARED?
Date: 27 Sep 1994 04:22:38 -0400

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Brad Pepers) writes:

   I am working on a database and was intending to mmap the file as 
   PROT_READ | PROT_WRITE and MAP_FILE | MAP_SHARED.  When experimenting
   with this I found out that the Linux mmap doesn't allow PROT_WRITE
   with MAP_SHARED.  Can anyone tell me if this is planned to be added
   soon?  Any pointers on how to make it work?  I just checked 1.1.51 and
   it still seemed to not allow it.

Correct, Linux does not currently support a mmap() with PROT_WRITE +
MAP_SHARED. This is to be added after the release of 1.2.0, so 1.3.0
will have it definately. You can get around this by taking the file
descriptor from the mmap call and just before you would normally close
it, do a HUGE write() to the file descriptor. I had to do this to get
emacs to dump properly as an elf binary.

Later,
David S. Miller
[email-masked]

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (C.W. Southern)
Subject: Re: ISODE
Date: Wed, 28 Sep 1994 17:21:48 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Aleph One) writes:
>I'am about to try to port the ISODE v7.0 package to linux.. (i should 
>really say try to). In any case i was wondering if anyone has doen this 
>already as i dont like to do things other people have done. Thanx.
>
>
I have been currently looking for this package.  But I remember seeing on
one of the archives (sunsite or tsx-11) isode, I think version 8.0.  But if 
I were you I would check.  If ISODE v7.0 has been ported to Linux can
someone point me in that direction.  Thanks.

chris.

-- 
Chris Southern                                          RIT Computer Science 
E-mail: [email-masked]               WWW: http://ultb.rit.edu/~cws9669

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Andreas Zisowsky)
Subject: Re: ISODE
Date: 28 Sep 1994 19:33:42 GMT

[email-masked] (Mike Jagdis) writes:

>What on earth for? The last public release was 8.0 (and there's even a patch 
>to that).

After isode 8.0 they went to IC (Isode Consortium) 1.0. And they are now
at version 2.03.

Ciao.
Andreas
-- 

Andreas Zisowsky      -----       Internet: [email-masked]
                                            [email-masked]

------------------------------

From: Alberto Vignani <[email-masked]>
Subject: Ftape bombed my system with 66MHz CPU (cont.)
Date: 28 Sep 1994 19:37:52 -0400
Reply-To: [email-masked]

Hi all.

In a previous post to c.o.l.d./c.o.l.h. I wrote:

|... I upgraded: the kernel, the libraries, and the CPU. I bought
|an AMD DX2-66, and was happy about it.
|
|Then ... ftape began to bomb my system.
|I saw all sort of panics and reboots.
|
|Today I changed back the CPU to the original Intel DX-33...and ftape
|worked. No panics, no troubles.
|To be sure, I just reinstalled the DX2 CPU and retried the same backup
|on another tape. The system hung, and a disk went into standby mode.
| ...

Thanks to all people who replied.

Actually I am very sure of the software installation; due to the previous
experiences, I'm used to recompile the ftape module after EVERY kernel
change. I confirm that all worked fine with the 33-MHz CPU, no matter
which compiler/library I used.

Here are the news: now ftape works also with my 66-MHz CPU.
I suspect there is some critical timing parameter on my hardware
(motherboard, chipset, RAM, FD controller?), which is exposed by the
faster CPU. You can't be sure of these cheap Taiwan boards, even if they
are officially certified for 50 MHz operation.

The quality of the crashes seemed to suggest some disruption of the
instruction flow, maybe a wrong memory read. I wonder why only the ftape
module was affected.

Now for the solution: 
After fiddling with the bus/RAM/cache parameters via the BIOS setup
with no success, I changed all references to inb() and outb() in
the file 'fdc-io.c' to inb_p() and outb_p(), so to slow down I/O
accesses via software. And this worked, at least for now.

Would someone please test this patch and see what happens? Actually
this should have no effect, but please check it and report any fault.

--- fdc-io.c.old        Thu Sep 29 00:05:58 1994
+++ fdc-io.c    Thu Sep 29 00:05:47 1994
@@ -147,7 +147,7 @@
   if (fdc_wait( 150, FDC_DATA_READY_MASK, FDC_DATA_IN_READY) < 0) {
     return -ETIME;
   } else {
-    outb( data, fdc.fifo);
+    outb_p( data, fdc.fifo);
     return 0;
   }
 }
@@ -163,7 +163,7 @@
   if (fdc_wait( 150, FDC_DATA_READY_MASK, FDC_DATA_OUT_READY) < 0) {
     return -ETIME;
   } else {
-    *data = inb( fdc.fifo);
+    *data = inb_p( fdc.fifo);
     return 0;
   }
 }
@@ -183,7 +183,7 @@
   fdc_usec_wait( RQM_DELAY);    /* wait for valid RQM status */
   save_flags( flags);
   cli();
-  fdc_status = inb( fdc.msr);
+  fdc_status = inb_p( fdc.msr);
   if ((fdc_status & FDC_DATA_READY_MASK) == FDC_DATA_IN_READY) {
     int retry = 0;
     fdc_mode = *cmd_data;       /* used by isr */
@@ -229,7 +229,7 @@
 
   save_flags( flags);
   cli();
-  fdc_status = inb( fdc.msr);
+  fdc_status = inb_p( fdc.msr);
   if ((fdc_status & FDC_DATA_READY_MASK) == FDC_DATA_OUT_READY) {
     int retry = 0;
     while (count) {

Bye
Alberto

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Hanks Bryan)
Subject: Re: UltraStor SCSI errors was Re: Future of Ultrastore support
Date: 28 Sep 1994 19:11:10 GMT

Rod Troch ([email-masked]) wrote:
: >>>>> "Robert" == Robert Ashcroft <[email-masked]> writes:

:       Robert> Having just bought a (cheap) Ultrastore 34F I was a
:       Robert> little dismayed to hear that it may not be able to
:       Robert> take advantage of some of the advances in the SCSI
:       Robert> speedups in recent kernels.  Something called SCSI
:       Robert> clustering speed up or something.

:       Robert> Can anyone explain what this is?  Do the device
:       Robert> drivers need to be rewritten for the Ultrastores?  How
:       Robert> likely is this to happen?

: I have been having the worst of luck with an UltraStor 24F EISA SCSI
: controller that I have at my office.  Under MSDOS all seems well.  I
: was able to access different SCSI drives, do low level formats, etc.
: Under Linux, using the UltraStor 1.11 alpha driver, things are much
: different.  Usually I load a boot floppy, the driver loads, it sniffs
: out my SCSI disk, recognizes the partitions then a few seconds later
: the kernel seems to dead-lock with a "SCSI host 0 timed out" error.

: Any clues as to what this might be?  Does a newer driver exist for the
: 24F?

: Thanks a million,
: Rod

        I have a 14F and havn't had a SINGLE problem since day one.  It
works great under both DOS and Linux.

--

Bryan Hanks                     | Professional Student: (Well all most)
[email-masked]          | More BS for your buck..  Ask for my
[email-masked]  | bulk or group discount!  
[email-masked]      | Student of the SETL lab.
===========================================================================
            Linux Advocate, Windows Killer, DOS Hater ......

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Yermo Lamers)
Subject: Smail Security Hole
Date: 28 Sep 1994 11:13:24 -0400

Someone posted modifications to the transports file so that a smail .forward
entry of /securityhole will be written using the user and group ids of
the owner of the .forward file.

This does not quite work as intended because /securityhole will still
be written even if the owner of the .forward file does not have
write permissions to the directory in question. (for instance /)

Once the file has been written, the user can then make it executable. For
instance a /bin/lc file could be created.

This is a serious security hole. Any SCO users out there? Do you find
yourself typing 'lc' instead of 'ls' much (as root)?

Any Linux system with this problem can be compromised.

A question : what are the implications of turning off smail's ability to
send mail to files? Or is that how it writes to mbox? What about the pipes
option? Can that safely be disabled?

------------------------------

From: Anselm Lingnau <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: [STATUS] Linus Floppy Driver Development
Date: 27 Sep 1994 11:41:16 +0100

In article <[email-masked]>,
Alan Hightower <ahightow@comp..uark.edu> wrote:

> don't do
> anything till the DCL changes (e.g. disk eject) then umount it.

How are you going to umount the disk if it's already been ejected? It seems
to me that this would rule out anything but read-only mounts.

Anselm

-- 
Anselm Lingnau ......................... [email-masked]
Windows 3.1 and DOS. Technically crap. Totally marketable. Extremely popular.
                                                               --- Paul Prescod

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Patrick Schaaf)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help
Subject: SOLUTION Re: SMail security hole?
Date: 28 Sep 1994 20:37:05 -0000

Someone mailed me asking where exactly the hole should be plugged,
and I just saw an incorrect solution by Lee Silverman (no offense
intended), so here's how the file: transport should really look like:

file:   driver=appendfile, return_path,
        from, unix_from_hack, local;            # or whatever
        file=$user,
        append_as_user,                         # essential
        check_path,                             # _this_ was missing
        expand_user,
        suffix="\n",
        mode=0644,

Without check_path, smail doesn't allow you to append to files
not owned by the user (append_as_user does that), but it allows
creation of new files in inaccessible directories. The original
warning posting said that :-)

The above config works for me (smail 3.1.28).

Followups are set out of .development.

bye
  Patrick

P.S.: I still don't understand why check_path is not in the sample
configuration for the file: driver, but having it as an option
is useful since driver=appendfile can be used for other transports
(i.e. batched smtp)

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