Hi Pascal.

09-Dec-03 15:41:38, Pascal Schmidt wrote to CHARLES ANGELICH

 PS> This can be done even under the Unix model, all the programmer
 PS> needs to do is use one stat() syscall and look at the resulting
 PS> information

yeah two common tools,  less and file are both capable of telling devices
apart from regular files,

 PS> The model of other operating systems, where files and devices have
 PS> different ways to access them leads to more code in programs and
 PS> thus more bugs. Also, there are often different interfaces to,
 PS> say, serial ports and printer ports. And thus each kind of device
 PS> gets their own interface (the Windows way) and the programmer
 PS> needs to learn all of them - and they all work differently, which
 PS> increases the risk of the programmer making a mistake. Under Unix,
 PS> it's open(), then write() and/or read(), to any device. Always
 PS> works the same way

almost.... say you want to change the console fontto some bitmap you have
oon hand you do an ioctl() instead of a write() but that still beats the
DOS way (a bios call)

 PS> Still, some knowledge of the system is required. I have often seen
 PS> Windows users tweak settings in their systems config to and fro
 PS> without knowing what they do. The reason being "I have seen it
 PS> working for someone when they did twiddle this setting". This may
 PS> be no problem on a home system, but even those are nowadays often
 PS> connected to the internet. I wouldn't say programming experience
 PS> is needed, but the basic principles of the system one needs to
 PS> know

yeah, there are thick books about configuring windows,  it's not the sort
of task the average user is fully capable of reguardless of what GUI stuff
is put on the face of the task...

 PS> Sometimes the admin needs to be able to cp to a device file (or
 PS> more likely dd). Also, default permissions on hard disk devices
 PS> and such are to deny normal users write access

 PS> Root is allowed to do everything, but that is sometimes necessary
 PS> to repair a damaged system

or to perform some maintenance tasks... (like backups (something I should
start doing now that I've got the lan operating))

 PS> What you advocate could be done, it's just that nobody so far
 PS> seems to have found it necessary because basically normal user
 PS> accounts are safe to use, no matter what you happen to type in.
 PS> All that can happen is that a user accidentally deletes all his
 PS> own files

or lock themself out. :)

 PS> thus reducing the risk of the admin making silly mistakes.

I trashed the wrong hard drives poartition table last month...
kept me bust for one rainy saturday and I learned stuff too,
on sunday I discovered the Partition_table_recovery_mini_howto (pretty much
waht I did) and gpart.

 PS> Trashing the system is all relative, of course. No system is
 PS> secure without backups - hard disks can go bad, or even the whole
 PS> system in case of a lightning strike

 PS> Back when I used DOS and Windows, I almost never made backups and
 PS> as a result have lost many things that I wrote in those days. I
 PS> switched to Linux in 1998, and I still have all the documents and
 PS> programs from then that were worth keeping

I put a lot of stuff on floppies which are no longer readable, but some of
it also kept on a corner of my hard disk.

 PS> The Unix way gives all power to the admin, including the power to
 PS> shoot your own foot or blow away your whole leg. With power comes
 PS> responsibilty. ;)

 indeed!

 -=> Bye <=-

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