Re: [RFC] File flags handling - proposal for API.

Wolfgang Walter (wolfgang.walter@stusta.mhn.de)
Fri, 25 Jun 1999 20:17:46 +0200


Hi,

how will such a 'directory which can be opened as file' behave compared to
2.0?

If a simple

fp = open(<directory>, O_RDONLY)

opens a default-file in <directory> instead of <directory> itself, then we
have (at least compared to 2.0) a rather subtile change which may implies
some severe security problems.

At least in 2.0, you may open a directory and use the filehanlde you got later
with fstat, fchown, fchmod. It would be rather bad if this will change.

First you may need this to manipulate directories in a secure way.
Second, most unixes will not have this "directory as file"-feature which means
that a lot of application will not be prepared to handle it correct.

Even if a directory must be marked with a flag, the security problem is still
there.

May I misunterstood this thread, in this case forget this mail and pardon me.
If I didn't, I'm real curious how one will handle this case.

Greetings

Wolfgang Walter

-- 
Veni, Vidi, VISA:
	I came, I saw, I did a little shopping.

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