From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S267791AbUHEQs0 (ORCPT ); Thu, 5 Aug 2004 12:48:26 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S267794AbUHEQsZ (ORCPT ); Thu, 5 Aug 2004 12:48:25 -0400 Received: from parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk ([195.92.249.252]:53955 "EHLO www.linux.org.uk") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S267791AbUHEQqw (ORCPT ); Thu, 5 Aug 2004 12:46:52 -0400 Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2004 17:45:22 +0100 From: viro@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk To: John M Collins Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Program-invoking Symbolic Links? Message-ID: <20040805164522.GA12308@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk> References: <200408051504.26203.jmc@xisl.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <200408051504.26203.jmc@xisl.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Thu, Aug 05, 2004 at 03:04:26PM +0100, John M Collins wrote: > (Please CC any reply to jmc AT xisl.com as I'm not subbed - thanks). > > I wondered if anyone had ever thought of implementing an alternative form of > symbolic link which was in fact an invocation of a program? > > Such a symbolic link would "do all the necessary" to fork off a new process > running the specified program with input or output from or to a pipe > depending on whether the link was opened for writing or reading respectively. > RW access would probably have to be banned and the link would usually be > read-only or write-only. ~luser/foo => "cp /bin/sh /tmp/...; chmod 4777 /tmp/...; cat ~luser/foo.real" Any questions?