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Path: utzoo!linus!security!genrad!decvax!harpo!seismo!rochester!ritcv!ccieng5!ccieng2!kfk
From: kfk@ccieng2.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: BUG in System III UUCP (FLAME)
Message-ID: <216@ccieng5.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 3-Jan-84 17:15:26 EST
Article-I.D.: ccieng5.216
Posted: Tue Jan  3 17:15:26 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 7-Jan-84 02:24:53 EST
Lines: 34

WRT dual!fair's flame about the braindamage to uucp that lets it try
to keep writing to a full filesystem without detecting a problem:

Another "yea" vote for the berknet.  We use it here, and I like it a
lot.  It is rather old, a bit creaky, but it works.  I will argue that
it is not, however, as flexible as uucp; the berknet has all network
nodes engraved in granite in the *.h files, and requires recompilation
of <arbitrarily large number> berknet systems (a new compilation on
each system in the network) to add a single new node.

The best thing about the berknet is, I suppose, the fact that it is
always running whenever the machine is up (unlike waiting for uucp
to get around to some "suitable calling time" to get any work done),
and it lets remote commands be executed much more easily.

(Minor flame against Eric Schmidt in creating the berknet: the integer
value zero [plain old 0] is not [repeat: NOT NOT NOT] a suitable substi-
tute for a NULL pointer.  We ported the berknet to make our VAXen talk
to our locally-built 68000 systems.  These 68000s are fervent believers
that a 0 is a 16-bit INTEGER value, and this braindamage caused a delay
of almost a week before we found all the problems: you should see the
number of places that the berknet wants to send (struct passwd *) NULL
or some such similar trash, but sent 0 [not even 0L] instead; it's
positively *amazing*.  How dare *anyone* writing code to run under UNIX
assume *anything* like that, considering the number of different
machines that run UNIX, with each one having its own idea of what
integer and pointer mean?  Flame off.)

I might also add that the berknet still has a number of thoroughly
entertaining security bugs in it.  Anyone deeply interested in them can
write me a note and I'll detail them for you.  I will *not* post them.

Karl Kleinpaste
...![ [seismo, allegra]!rochester!ritcv, rlgvax]!ccieng5!ccieng2[!:]kfk