3.2 bug from H E double Toothpick

Robert Viduya robert at shangri-la.gatech.edu
Thu Feb 22 05:39:40 AEST 1990


> 
> Warning:  I have just encountered a rather nasty and merciless bug in 3.2.
>           I clicked on a folder to open it up under workspace and it simply
>           disappeared.  No query, no appearance in the dumpster, just
>           vaporized...
> 
>           Nice going to whoever included to this option...
> 

This could be caused by using the workspace on an NFS mounted directory that's
exported from a non-SGI server.  I noticed this problem before, tracked it down
to the fact that the disappearing directory's mode was 0700 and was on an NFS
filesystem.  The workspace uses a daemon process running in the background to
update the directory views and that process runs as root and root can't normally
see into mode 0700 directories on an NFS filesystem.  One exception is that SGI
NFS servers do allow root on client workstations to see into mode 0700 directories.

I called the hotline to report the problem.  They said that the workspace was working
as designed and if you want to see into NFS directories, they have to be something
like mode 0755 (world-readable).  Which means you can't have secure directories and
still be able to use them from the workspace.

When I asked the hotline why root on client workstations can access mode 0700 NFS
directories, they looked through the NFS server code and discovered a bug and said
it would be fixed in the next release.  We'll see.

			robert
---

Robert Viduya					   robert at shangri-la.gatech.edu
Office of Computing Services
Georgia Institute of Technology					 (404) 894-6296
Atlanta, Georgia	30332-0275



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