Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!iuvax!bsu-cs!jdh
From: jdh@bsu-cs.UUCP (John Hiday)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Bug in FFS write-locking?
Message-ID: <5411@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Date: 22 Jan 89 22:09:10 GMT
Reply-To: jdh@bsu-cs.UUCP (John Hiday)
Organization: Ball State University UCS, Muncie, IN
Lines: 27

I think I have discovered a bug in the write-locking of an FFS partition.
I have tried to send a notice to bugs@cbmvax, but I haven't gotten a reply
back so I am assuming that nothing made it through.

It seems that LOCKing an FFS partition does not prohibit a program from
writing to an existing file (appending or overwriting).  I have reproduced
this on both my hard drive and RAD: (the only FFS devices I have).  I
had a friend try it out too and he came up with the same results.

The Info command shows the partition as Read Only, and any attempt to
create a new file or delete an old one is met with the "Volume xyz is
write protected" requester.  However appending to and/or overwriting an
existing file succeeds.

A simple way to demonstrate this is to add a comment to an existing
Zoo archive which is on a LOCKed partition (zoo cA archivename).
Creating a new archive will fail, but adding to an old one succeeds.

I realize that the only "real" write-protection comes from hardware, but
I was expecting a little more than this from LOCK.

Is this a bug or am I missing something?

-- 
UUCP  : <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee,uunet}!bsu-cs!jdh                 John Hiday
BITNET: 00JDHIDAY@BSUVAX1.BITNET            Ball State Univ Computing Services
GEnie : JDHIDAY                                               Muncie, IN 47306