Re: "Metas"

[David Masover <ninja@slaphack.com>]

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| But...what about the UNIX security issues where files that aren't
| executable can't have their "metas" accessed?  I suppose that will
| require extensive VFS changes and coordination with Al Viro?

I had an idea I was all ready to send in again, but it doesn't quite
work.  The idea was to make execute mean "execute", and have no meaning
for directories.  Rather, directories are either "readable" or "not
readable".

Another idea which seems to work much better is to merely have two modes
for each file -- one for the file-as-a-file and one for the
file-as-a-directory.  This could allow for files in which the file can
be read, but none of its children can.  By default, foo/ has the same
permissions as foo, but foo/ is guarenteed to have an execute bit when
foo is first created.  The problem is making this efficient -- for
almost all files, this would never be changed, but for some files, it
would, which suggests something like inheritance -- if a certain
property of a file does not exist, it is inherited from the parent, and
/ would have sane properties.

I like both ideas, because I think the execute bit on directories is
useless for everything except reiser4, but then I thought:  maybe foo is
a hash of foo/password, but foo/password is read/write, not just write,
so with reiser4, it makes sense to be able to read() but not readdir()
or chdir(), even if it still doesn't make sense to be able to
read/readdir but not chdir.
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