*BSD News Article 13983


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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.development
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From: weingart@inf.ethz.ch (Tobias Weingartner)
Subject: Re: File Truncation Philosophy
Message-ID: <1993Apr4.124352.11522@neptune.inf.ethz.ch>
Followup-To: comp.os.386bsd.development
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Organization: ETH - Switzerland
References: <C4tJ6C.C17@ns1.nodak.edu> <CGD.93Apr1173018@eden.CS.Berkeley.EDU> <C4u8y2.HCM@ns1.nodak.edu> <CGD.93Apr1204906@eden.CS.Berkeley.EDU> <1993Apr2.072443.790@cm.cf.ac.uk>
Date: Sun, 4 Apr 1993 12:43:52 GMT
Lines: 25

In article <1993Apr2.072443.790@cm.cf.ac.uk>, paul@isl.cf.ac.uk (Paul) writes:
[deleted]
> 
> Maybe I'm missing the obvious but ....
> 
> What about users moving their own binaries around. If cp et al don't
> work properly then aren't users (including root) just as likely to bring
> the system down when they overwrite running binaries.
> 
> We're not just talking about installation and init updates. You can't
> expect novice users to know that they shouldn't copy foo.new to foo
> while they're running foo.
> 
> Enlightening flames welcome :-)

All the kernel has to do, is the following.

If an image is currently executing, the kernel will return E_EXEC or
something like that if a process tries to open it for write.

--Toby.

Tobias Weingartner  *    PGP2.1 Public Key available at     *
 +41'41'33'25'40    *   'finger weingart@tau.inf.ethz.ch'   *
%SYSTEM-F-ANARCHISM, the operating system has been overthrown