Hi CHARLES! :-)

 CA> I need to research this 'automount' and others like it. I
 CA> really don't trust myself to not forget to do the 'umount'.
Should only be a problem for floppy drives, CD-ROMs and the like lock the
door while the disc is mounted, so you can't accidentally eject them.

 CA> OK, so there is some learning involved to memorize what 'dev'
 CA> you need to be addressing and when. 
Yes.

 CA> I have serious problems with code that is very similar but
 CA> different such as using AWK for awhile then back to C then back
 CA> to AWK. They are just enough alike to make remembering the
 CA> _exact_ syntax difficult (for me). 
Amen. I often program in Haskell and Standard ML, which are two functional
programming languages with some common heritage. The syntax is very much
alike in some areas, but in others the same constructs exist in both
languages but mean very different things. Sometimes I don't pay attention
and very interesting error messages come up. ;)

 CA> Outlook is such a mess the first thing I did was archive the
 CA> entire Outlook directory so that no other app could 'call'
 CA> Outlook for _any_ reason. IEx is a bit more difficult to just
 CA> ignore. Webpages must be functional when using IEx v4 or better
 CA> since it has a huge proportion of the total Internet users
 CA> using it (one version or another). I depend on my ZoneAlarm
 CA> install and popup blocking software plus I have altered
 CA> permissions for ActiveX that prevent simple exploits at least.
 CA> :-\ 
So you have taken measures to prevent exploits. I doubt the average user of
today does this or even knows that it might be a wise idea. Much less do
they know how to do it. I know people who consider it a hassle even to
change a few IE settings. For them, it must work out of the box and they
don't want to be bothered with doing anything that requires changing
default settings.

 PS>> I have cp aliased on my system to "cp -i" so that it
 PS>> asks before overwriting anything. ;) 
 CA> Good example. :-) 
Did the same for mv and rm.

 CA> That should be the default 'mode' for the binary with an
 CA> override if you don't want prompting IMO. ;-) 
The alias does work for everybody because I made it a system-wide default.
If I remember correctly, this was configured by default, but only for
normal users and not root. I changed it to take effect for root also.

Your point is valid, though. It could be the default with non-prompt mode
available by switch. The only problem then is scripting, because you don't
want to ask questions from a shell script because often there's nobody
there to ask. It gets ugly when all the tools normally used in scripts need
a special switch to prevent prompting - and forget one of them in a script
and it doesn't work unattended. Still possible.

 CA> If sys admin was my 'career' move I would learn to modify the
 CA> code for the more potentially damaging utilities to, as you
 CA> have, prompt before overwriting/deleting/etc. and recomple them
 CA> then remove the 'standard' versions from the machines. 
Or just move the standard version to some area only accessible by admins. :)

 PS>> On full distributions, there are GUI tools for doing that. 
 CA> I'm just guessing here but the GUI can't 'promote' itself to
 CA> 'root' which means the user would have to login as 'root' to
 CA> use the GUI, Y/N? 
It is possible. Some tools pop up a message window where you need to type
in the root password and then the tool itself can run as root. If this is
not possible on some distribution, the distributor needs to learn better
ways. It's quite easy to program.

 CA> You are fortunate to have the MO drive. Most of us don't. :-\ 
It was quite an investment at the time, yeah. It was somewhere around 300
US$, I think - but it was worth it.

 CA> Allowing logins as 'root' to use binaries that overwrite files
 CA> without prompting is the "smoking gun" that eventually seems to
 CA> shoot newbies in the foot given enough time they get
 CA> bored/curious and go for it. :-) 
Most people seem to get away with losing only a few files or minor damage
to the system - and you get very careful after that. ;)

Ciao
Pascal

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