> Considering that most distributions install X so that anybody can start it, even
> if he's not at the console, it might be considered a security issue. Currently I
> put a wrapper around startx so only I can start it.
People around XFree tell you to _never_ allow people running
startx. xdm is preffered method... (Well, I still use startx ;-).
> > Try to shutdown a machine from within X - this will hang your machine too.
> > This is not a kernel bug, neither it is X. It is just doing stupid things
> > (as root, and X "is" root-privileged) in UNIX causes problems. It is fine
> > by me ;)
>
> why is shutting down a machine from within X stupid? I don't understand this.
> If I have sysvinit, and my default runlevel is 5, then I would expect to be
> able to shut down my system by typing /sbin/shutdown or whatever in an xterm.
Just guessing, but it is generally bad idea to hit X with kill
-9. When you shutdown and X are running, that _might_ happen. I do not
know consequences - trashed display is the obvious one.
Pavel
PS: Really, X is not normal app. It has root privileges and direct
access to hardware. You better be carefull.
PPS: Do you want to crash machine? Nearly any machine running
linux+X... Start few processess, get few MB into swap. Now start
switching to/from X windows. This works on 2.1.70 sparclinuxes in
school, linux 2.0.30 + X with s3 in school, it used to work on my old
486 with tvga8900... You can get it to unusable console (tvga8900,
sparc) or even complete system freeze (s3).
Linux console has design problems (KDSETMODE is working on _current_
console. but what if someone changes console in between? how do you
get new console? OPENQUERY + ACTIVATE. Aha, but there's race between
those two.)
I'd clean that up... But I'm afraid linus will just kill such
interface change...
Pavel
-- I'm really pavel@atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz. Pavel Look at http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/ ;-).- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/