Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!rex!ames!pacbell!att!chinet!les
From: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: What new system calls do you want in BSD?
Message-ID: <1990Feb12.173122.25459@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 12 Feb 90 17:31:22 GMT
References: <12157@stealth.acf.nyu.edu> <1990Jan24.193433.3332@semi.harris-atd.com> <23449@stealth.acf.nyu.edu>
Reply-To: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Chinet - Chicago Public Access UNIX
Lines: 21

In article <19451@nuchat.UUCP> steve@nuchat.UUCP (Steve Nuchia) writes:
>>If the filesystem is mounted read-only, the atime doesn't get updated, is
>>this a security violation?

>Hmm... maybe we don't need a new sys call, or a new argument/flag for
>old ones, to let backup avoid updating the inode.  Maybe we just need
>to remove an arbitrary restriction on an old one.  Namely, allow devices
>to be mounted more than once.  If the second mount is RO then you
>can back up from it and get most of what you want.

Yes!  I'll second that one.  In fact, I'd go even further and let
arbitrary directories be mapped as read-only mount points.  The mechanisms
are probably mostly in place already in RFS and/or NFS.  Just provide
a local-loopback and take away the restriction of only mounting a
resource in one place on a machine (RFS has this, I don't know about
NFS).  I've wanted this in RFS anyway to give "public" read-only access
via one mount point while having "system" read/write access at the same
time through a different mount point.

Les Mikesell
 les@chinet.chi.il.us