Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!munnari.oz.au!metro!macuni!sunc!ifarqhar
From: ifarqhar@sunc.mqcc.mq.oz.au (Ian Farquhar)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: AmigaOS/UNIX - A Suggestion
Message-ID: <643@macuni.mqcc.mq.oz>
Date: 22 Oct 90 00:30:14 GMT
References: <606@macuni.mqcc.mq.oz> <15069@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Sender: news@macuni.mqcc.mq.oz
Organization: Macquarie University, Sydney
Lines: 31

In article <15069@cbmvax.commodore.com> ken@cbmvax.commodore.com (Ken Farinsky - CATS) writes:
>In article <606@macuni.mqcc.mq.oz> ifarqhar@sunc.mqcc.mq.oz.au writes:
>>...Why not, through the use of a loadable handler, let AmigaOS 
>>share the UNIX partition...
...
>How are you going to handle protection issues (user/group/other)
>and file ownership (user name space)?

Well, two points to make:

Firstly, as lots of other people have said, this is not much different
from NFS.  A handler which could access the shadow passwd and group files 
within the UNIX partition could determine access rights (presuming that the 
user was able to provide valid username and passwords), and UNIX file
security is fairly basic.  All you need is the login UID and GID, which
are quite easy to determine.

Secondly, few people have pointed out the basic security flaw in Amiga
UNIX: anybody with a fairly simple program can access *anything* in the
UNIX partition as long as this program can read sectors from the disk
under AmigaOS.  The scsi.device (or whatever is being provided) should
be able to do this nicely, so without much work a file transfer program
could be written that would lay the UNIX filing system wide open.
Maybe I've missed something here or made an invalid assumption, but this
seems a worry to me!

--
Ian Farquhar                      Phone : 61 2 805-9404
Office of Computing Services      Fax   : 61 2 805-7433
Macquarie University  NSW  2109   Also  : 61 2 805-7205
Australia                         EMail : ifarqhar@suna.ocs.mq.oz.au