Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!ucsd!ucbvax!agate!ziploc!eps From: eps@toaster.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Re: Don't backup from root ! Message-ID: <1092@toaster.SFSU.EDU> Date: 5 Jan 91 06:17:38 GMT References: <7u98u2w163w@questor.wimsey.bc.ca> <12886@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> Reply-To: eps@cs.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott) Organization: San Francisco State University Lines: 33 In article <12886@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> clt@cs.purdue.edu (Carrick Talmadge) writes: >The hard disk should have the following permissions: > > crw-r----- 1 root operator 14, 0 Apr 5 1990 /dev/rsd0a > >This gives group operator read permission to the hard drive, but not >write permission. (Anyone else interested in a CFD for comp.sys.next.humor?) As a previous poster mentioned, this isn't VAX/VMS, and there ain't no such thing as READALL privilege. What good does read access to the raw device give you? Nothing!!! What were you planning to do? Image copy the bits? Good luck ever restoring anything from *that*. The only way you're going to get anything useful on backup media is if you read the disk ->through the filesystem<-. You know what it takes to do that? [dramatic pause] You have to be root! Nothing less will do, unless you want to reimplement most of the filesystem code in user mode (decidely nontrivial) (or hack the kernel, but that's asking too much). Trying to circumvent the file system on a disk that's currently mounted read/write is probably not such a hot idea. (Am I being too subtle?) If you can't use the standard tools without trashing things, write a front-end shell script that won't do anything too stupid. -=EPS=-