Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2002 08:40:26 -0500 From: Rob McGee To: "'opendos AT delorie DOT com'" Subject: Re: DOS/Linux coexistence (was: [Club Dr-DOS]) #2b Message-ID: <20020603134025.GP27335@hal> References: <01FD6EC775C6D4119CDF0090273F74A4FD6752 AT emwatent02 DOT meters DOT com DOT au> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <01FD6EC775C6D4119CDF0090273F74A4FD6752@emwatent02.meters.com.au> User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.27i Reply-To: opendos AT delorie DOT com Errors-To: nobody AT delorie DOT com X-Mailing-List: opendos AT delorie DOT com X-Unsubscribes-To: listserv AT delorie DOT com Precedence: bulk On Mon, Jun 03, 2002 at 07:33:43PM +1000, da Silva, Joe wrote: > more than the standard DR-DOS files, I may as well > not have bothered to download this, especially if I can > use my existing DR-DOS partition instead. That's right. And if you know how to tweak your config.sys, I'll bet you can make your DOS boot differently under dosemu > Yeah, I know, the *nix world is very protective of root > privileges, whereas DOS users take such privileges > as their natural right. I'm sure I'm not the only user > from the DOS world that invariably runs as "root". As you might have guessed, I came from the DOS world as well; that's why I'm on this list. And although I no longer *use* DOS, you never know if nor when you might have to use it again. Plus, there are interesting and talented people here, not to mention the great selection of spam! :O ;) I had the same thought as you. Harrumph, who is this pissant operating system to tell *ME* I'm not completely in charge? But I trusted in the gurus who invariably say "don't do that". That kept me out of trouble, and eventually I learned why they say that. It's not just about protecting your OS from yourself -- it's about preventing many potential problems, many of which you couldn't know about in advance. The more processes running as root, the more potential exploits are open on your system. You know, when I switched from Win95 to NT4, I had the same thought about their implementation of UNIX-like privilege levels. So I put my user account in the Administrator group -- totally defeating the purpose and potential benefit thereof. However, in NT you have to do that, unless you don't mind logging out and in and out and in again whenever you need to administer the system. They provide none of the *nix tools like su, sudo, and SUID. (Typical MS implementation, where they mess it up.) > One of the first things I did, after spending two days > trying to figure out how, was to "SUID" (I think that's > what it's called) the "shutdown" command. I think In Slackware, the Ctrl-Alt-Delete keystroke is mapped to a reboot. You can easily change that to shutdown instead. See /etc/inittab for the details (and read "man inittab" if yours isn't well-commented.) That's how I handle shutting down (which is rare, BTW.) I wouldn't SUID the shutdown binary, because a remote user could do it, even by accident ("Hmmm, what would happen if I typed 'shutdown'?" :) But anyone with physical access to my machine could shut it down in a number of ways. I *do* have a few other users on my machine. Notably wife and kids, but even some external friends who can come in via ssh. > it's absurd that a "pleb" user can easily hit the reset > or power switch, yet is by default not allowed to > shut down the system properly! Strange priorities > these *nix folks have! Not so strange when you think of the heritage. UNIX was born of big mainframes, not PC's. Imagine a mainframe at a university, where you probably have malicious (or at least mischievous) users. You wouldn't want your /sbin/shutdown SUID! :) > Yes, there are MANY favourite programs that I miss > from the DOS world, like John Whitney's "Visual > Compare", Peter Norton's "Text Search", DR-DOS's The dosemu.org site might tell you whether these have been tested. I'm not familiar with either, however WRT text searching of files, GNU grep can work miracles. :) Not the best user interface, though. > > As you can imagine, I haven't made much of an income in this profession. > > ;) But perhaps someday, I figure. > > Your name's not W.G. the III, huh? ;-) I had to think to figure out what you meant. No, no Gates. AAMOF I recently participated in a "who's poorest" contest on Usenet, and I think I "won" it. :) I'll spare you the gory details, but hint that it can be found in a Google groups search of alt.os.linux.slackware for "/dev/rob0 churchmice". ;) Rob - /dev/rob0