Re: Thinking outside the box on file systems

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Wed, Aug 15, 2007 at 09:02:37AM -0400, Michael Tharp wrote:
> This jumped out at me right away. In such a system, an attacker with
> write permissions on a "sticky" directory like /tmp could probe for
> others' files by attempting to create them and recording all cases where
> permission was denied due to an existing, hidden file. But of course,
> this was just an example of something a less UNIX-y permission scheme
> could do, not a key part of such a design.
> 
> Personally, what I'd like to see is a better way of dealing with
> propagation of ownership. Currently, in order to allow "collaboration"
> directories where a directory tree is owned by a certain group and
> anyone in that group can write and create files, one has to change the
> system umask, use a magical bit on the collaboration directory to
> propagate group ownership, and create a group for every user on the
> system in order to keep their personal files safe with the new umask.
> This seems highly flawed. I suggest that propagation of group ownership
> should be the default mode, not a special one, and that the
> group-writable permissions should also be propagated to new files and
> directories. This way, the user's home directory would remain 0755,
> while the collaboration directory could be 0775, without any changing of
> umasks.
> 
> Of course, this would go against tradition, and cause some mayhem in the
> logic responsible for magically determining permissions for new files,
> but since we're talking about thinking outside of the box, I think
> that's excusable :)

Posix ACLs seem to solve most group permissions issues and control of
permission propegation.  It actually works quite well on Linux.  I am
surprised if there aren't lots of people already using it.

Remember that existing software expects a unix style interface, since
they are unix programs.  Anything you invent MUST be compatible with the
standard unix view of things, even if it offers additional options.

--
Len Sorensen
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