Re: what's next for the linux kernel?

From: Marc Perkel
Date: Wed Oct 05 2005 - 22:52:50 EST




Horst von Brand wrote:

Marc Perkel <marc@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[...]



What you don't understand is that Netware's permissions mechanish is
totally different that Linux. A hard link in Netware wouldn't inherit
rights the way Linux does. So the user would have rights to their hard
link to delete that link without having rights to unlink the file.



OK, so a "hard link" isn't (because it has separate permissions than the
original). Sorry, watered-down symlinks don't cut it. Or just by linking
the file into my place I now have rights to modify it? The later idea makes
my skin try to crawl away...



This is an important concept so pay attention. Linux stores all the
permission to a file with that file entry.



You are completely right: This is an extremely central concept to
everything Unix.



Netware doesn't. Netware
calculates effective rights from the parent directories and it is all
inherited unless files or directoies are explicitly set
differently. So if files are added to other people folders then those
people get rights to it automatically without having to go to the
second step of changing the file's permissions.



Which is a very clear explanation of how broken it all is. No wonder
NetWare is no more. Files whose persmissions change depending on which way
you look at them is a nightmare. Sure, you /can/ manage that for small(ish)
setups by brute force, but it soon has to break down.


If you all think Netware is no more you are under an interesting illusion. Linux being cheap has cut into the little server market - but if you have thousands of servers all running off the same shared permissions systems - you just aren't going to do that off of Linux.

--
Marc Perkel - marc@xxxxxxxxxx

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