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From: whirt@cup.portal.com (William Bill Hirt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Locks and Viruses. Another 1.4 wish?
Message-ID: <17304@cup.portal.com>
Date: 16 Apr 89 22:52:54 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 32


I'm posting this for a friend who does not have net access. E-Mail responses
would be fine.

Subject: AmigaDOS LOCK command; how safe is it?

Having read in a previous post from CATS (Bryce?), that the IRQ virus
uses the trackdisk.device directly to get around any protection bits
stored with a file, it has left me wondering about the safety of using
the AmigaDOS LOCK command. Can LOCK protect a FFS partition from this
type of event (since it uses Hddisk.device instead of trackdisk.device),
or does the direct use of any low-level device (such as trackdisk,
hddisk, or even jdisk (w/the FFS "hack")) circumvent the protection
claimed by LOCK? If so, then am I to assume that Lock is instead ear-
marked as protection from operator mistakes (Delete SYS: ALL)?
If this is the case, is it a viable project for v1.4 without slowing
 [31m-- more -- [36m [Kthe system to a crawl?

My reason for asking is that if LOCK does indeed offer protection in
this way, I am planning to LOCK my SYS: partition which will contain
not only Workbench files/utilities, but my applications programs as
well. I will then partition off another area to be used for data files.

I would appreciate (very much so!) any information on this before I go
to the trouble of re-formatting and re-partitioning an 80 megabyte drive.
(Please note that I plan on making my DH0: partition microscopic in size,
and transfer control immediately to the FFS partition(s), thereby (hope-
fully) leaving minimal room for viri to incubate...)

Thanks!
(P.S.:  I'm using an A2090a controller w/ST506 drives if that has any
bearing on this matter.)