Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!uc!cs.umn.edu!brsmith
From: brsmith@cs.umn.edu (Brian R. Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Security problem with xterm?
Message-ID: <1990Jul11.195550.8608@cs.umn.edu>
Date: 11 Jul 90 19:55:50 GMT
References: <1990Jul10.002705.13718@cs.umn.edu> <9007101330.AA18616@expire.lcs.mit.edu>
Organization: University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, CSci dept.
Lines: 42

rws@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU (Bob Scheifler) writes:

>    What else can you use to figure out if the user should be grabbing
>    console?

> Well, one idea we had here is to integrate console-output support
> into xdm while it's waiting for login (yes, we know we need to do
> that in any case).  The process managing console output (probably it
> would be a separate process, rather than embedded as someone else
> posted code for) would assert some selection (e.g. CONSOLE), and
> would survive the login process.  xterm -C would be changed to work
> either if the user had read/write access or if some other client
> currently holds the magic selection.  xterm would itself then grab
> the selection; loss of ownership would be the signal for the
> original console program to terminate.

> Is that too complicated?

Er - one vote here for "yes".

As long as you're whipping up another client to grab the console output,
why not just let it run all the time?  Like (sortof) what NeXT has.

Call it "xconsole" - it could just float disconnected, slurping up all
console output, until requested to put up a window.  Because it runs
all the time, it could get ALL of the console output and store it -
rather than just that since login time.

Then you could also abolish the "-C" option to xterm.  Xterm's bloated
anyhow...

> There are systems with other mechanisms for redirecting the console,
> xterm -C should work for them as well.

"xterm -C" would look like an ugly hack if you had a generic
console-logging client.  Of course, you might look at this as just
a different and inconvenient way to rewrite syslogd...

It's a thought.

Brian
brsmith@cs.umn.edu