Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!bbn!apple!vsi1!octopus!avsd!childers
From: childers@avsd.UUCP (Richard Childers)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.headers
Subject: administration fascism
Message-ID: <445@avsd.UUCP>
Date: 28 Jan 89 07:39:47 GMT
References: <412@execu.UUCP> <7094@xanth.cs.odu.edu> <412@avsd.UUCP> <1715@helios.ee.lbl.gov>
Reply-To: childers@avsd.UUCP (Richard Childers)
Organization: die Edelstahlratte
Lines: 31

leres@helios.ee.lbl.gov (Craig Leres) writes:

>Richard Childers writes:

>> When I find .forward files in the LAN ... I cat /dev/null into them and
chown them to root and chmod the sucker to 444 and that's that.

>This sounds gratuitously fascist to me. Luckly, it's not hard to remove
>such a file ...

But it is impossible to edit it until it is removed, and provokes the required
dialogue between user and administrator ... which is all I ask.

>The advanced reader might want to use "rm -f .forward"

One presumes that the advanced reader doesn't mangle his .forward ...

Actually, I have been at enlightened sites where /usr/lib/aliases was writeable
by the world. But if you can't trust your users to edit /usr/lib/aliases, then
you probably can't trust them to edit .forward, either.

>		Craig

-- richard


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