Re: Floppy handling

From: Khimenko Victor (khim@sch57.msk.ru)
Date: Tue Jun 20 2000 - 05:50:42 EST


In <200006200405.WAA13655@aztec.santafe.edu> Richard Stallman (rms@gnu.org) wrote:
> Part of the problem is security - you don't want any user to remove/use the
> floppy other than the owner of the floppy. This cannot be enforced since
> anyone with physical access to the system can remove the floppy (mounted
> or not). Removal of a mounted device will (nearly always) damage the
> file system.

> This is an issue on just a tiny fraction of the machines that exist.
> Even most network servers do not really have a problem, because people
> can solve it just fine with an informal social arrangement.

> Note that the mtools programs (which we use to avoid the inconvenience
> of mount and umount) "have this problem" now.

It does not. Since floppy when used with mtools can NEVER be part of filesystem
you can not have background indexing process playing with that floppy.

> It is possible to write a floppy, not knowing that someone else replaced it
> with another floppy.

Problem is not as much people-to-people communication but more people-to-system
communication. With mtools you can only copy file from floppy and to floppy and
that's all. With floppy as part of filesystem you can have indexes there, you
can add "My Web" to your web server (it's really convinient sometimes to have
"My Web" on floppy - then you can test it on any computer with FrontPage
installed), etc, etc.

> So, what does practical experience say? Is this a serious
> problem, in practice? I am pretty sure no one will say so. The
> problem is just academic.

It's not academic when you'll include things like ZIP drive or MO drive in
picture. It's floppy (sort of) and it's big and fast enough to use it not just
for transferring few files from one system to another. If we are talking about
"regular floppies" then perhaps "iMac solution" can be used: just do not put
such device in system :-)

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