Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!decwrl!hplabs!hpfcdc!hpfcmgw!hpfcse!hpuecoa!speclab!rclark
From: rclark@speclab.bgp-usgs.gov (Roger N. Clark)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp
Subject: allocate/deallocate command wanted
Message-ID: <210024@speclab.bgp-usgs.gov>
Date: 3 Aug 89 19:47:27 GMT
Organization: U.S. Geological Survey, Branch of Geophysics, Denver
Lines: 23

I've asked this question some months ago, but it seems appropriate
to ask it again.

What to do about allocating tape drives, plotters and other devices
that user programs must communicate to directly?

For example, say I want to do a tar of all my stuff.  I just put on
a tape, and away I go.  What happens if somone else writes to the
tape while I am writing?  What happens if my job has just finished,
and someone else starts writing--they write on my tape!  All kinds
of bad things can happen: someone could read a record on my tape,
and if my job was about to write, it could write in the wrong place
(making me write over my own data), or someone could read sensitive
information.

Unix needs an allocate/deallocate command for devices.  Anyone know
of a public domain version they could post?  For HP and other
companies selling to business, isn't it a little embarrassing to not
have such a simple security feature?  Are there any plans in the
Unix standardization efforts to make such a command?

Roger N. Clark
..!speclab!rclark