SCO doesn't sell UNIX

Gordon C. Galligher gorpong at ping.uucp
Mon Dec 3 16:01:03 AEST 1990


In article <1990Nov29.205938.3671 at digibd.com> rhealey at digibd.com (Rob Healey) writes:
>	Aside from the fact that everyone seems to have joyous
>	glee in bashing SCO as often as possible and the security
>	fiasco, WHAT in SCO UNIX 3.2v2 makes it incompatable with
>	3.2 from a user's point of view? I program on a SCO UNIX 3.2v2

Have you used the crontab of SCO's unix?  Have you used the 'df' program of
SCO's unix?  Have you used the su of SCO's unix?  All of these things are
not 'standard' UNIX, even with C2 security relaxed.  You cannot 'su' to 
root (or anyone else) unless you mess with the tcb/auth/crap files manually.
If you finally are successful in su'ing to root, you are really NOT root.
You cannot do things like change user's passwords (unless your LOGIN-ID has
a special thing set up on tcb/auth/crap, and then you can be the normal user
and STILL change other's passwords).  If you 'su' to another user, you cannot
use 'crontab' which breaks things like:  su uucp -c 'crontab /tmp/crontab'.
This is all things which are done in a user's point of view (yes, users DO
use the 'su' command, well, er, they DID before SCO "unix" came out...).

You may say that this is the security thing; well, yes it is.  The problem
is, SCO has made the security TOO much a part of the entire operating
system.  Merely 'relax'ing security in the sysadmsh is not enough.  Too
many programs expect it to be running.  It is almost as bad as Sun's
brain-damaged 386i line which forced its users to use YP, you could not
even send MAIL without having YP running, but I digress. :-)

		-- Gordon.

-- 
Gordon C. Galligher	9127 Potter Rd. #2E	Des Plaines, IL    60016-4881
		     ...!{uupsi,uu.psi.com}!ping!gorpong



More information about the Comp.unix.sysv386 mailing list