On Wed, Oct 21, 1998 at 05:33:48PM +0100, Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS wrote: > I suppose the thing I like least about UNIX is the way every program I > run automatically receives permission to do everything I can do, e.g. > delete all my files, send mail on my behalf, etc, etc. Also, there is > nothing like a "virtual machine": portability of programs can not be > enforced because every program can examine its environment and decide > to fail if certain files exist on the system or whatever. This second > issue is a consequence of the first one, of course: every program > unnecessarily receives permission to examine the system it is running > on.
Not actually true, you can write a libc-wrapper library to limit the accessibility of the system. fakeroot is an example, it makes the program believe to be root in some cases, by using a libc wrapper. Of course, things would be much better if the operating system itself supported this. -Michele
