Re: Changes to the filesystem while find is running - comments?

[Marcus Brinkmann]

> James Youngman wrote:
> > I would have assumed that security considerations would require that
> > although ordinary Hurd users can set up translators, the translators
> > they've set up would no appear in other users' views of the
> > filesystem.  If translators you've set up are invisible to me when I'm
> > running "find", they can't be used to compromise my security, can
> > they?  

It's not that way, but I am convinced it _should_ be that way by
default unless you choose otherwise.  Ie, you should be able to select
which users filesystems you see by setting an environment variable.

The current implementation is to see all filesystems by default,
though, unless you open the mount point nodes with O_NOTRANS.

I have not checked the particular security issue you want to address,
but the security problems with automatically following arbitrary
user's filesystems are numerous and not limited to find.

This is something the Hurd has to address, IMO, and not the authors of
traditional Unix tools.

Thanks,
Marcus