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From: carl@CITHEX.CALTECH.EDU (Carl J Lydick)
Newsgroups: mod.computers.vax
Subject: RE: VMS: LP11s and file security
Message-ID: <860817113616.008@CitHex.Caltech.Edu>
Date: Sun, 17-Aug-86 14:36:43 EDT
Article-I.D.: CitHex.860817113616.008
Posted: Sun Aug 17 14:36:43 1986
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>    >Subj:	VMS: questions about LP11s and file security

I find it hard to believe that not one, but several people, have submitted
'solutions' to this problem without bothering to see if they had the slightest
chance of working.  In particular, the one fallacious assumption that seems to
be more common than I would have believed is that: "it does not really matter
what the protection is on the files and subdirecteries is, since if one can't
access the root, then the whole tree is inaccessable".  This assumption
has turned up in two separate submissions, and it points out the crying
need for some documentation on how a FILES-11 ODS works, and how RMS deals
with one.  You DO NOT have to have access to the MFD (master file directory,
not "root") in order to access the rest of the files on the disk, unless
they all reside in the MFD.  In order to protect all the files on the disk,
you would have to set an acl on every directory on the disk.  And besides,
there's a much more straightforward way of doing this:  
	$ SET ACL/OBJECT_TYPE=DEVICE/ACL=(ace,....) device_name
Sets an acl not on the files, but on the device itself.  Thus, there need
be only one ACL checked per channel assignment to the disk; you don't have
to hope that nobody makes a good guess as to the names of the user-file
directories on the disk and therefore gets access to the files without access
to the MFD, and if you want to change your policy regarding access, there's
only one ACL that has to be modified.