I think that is a fundamentally flawed assumption. Root can do *ANYTHING*. Anything at all. Sure, preventing crashes is good, but you can't get around the fact that root is omniscient.
On Sunday 25 July 2010 19:16:05 bofh wrote: > Ok, when I first learnt how to use unix nearly 20 years ago, one of > the things I learnt was that a privileged user can break shit, but > should not cause kernels to hang or crash. That would be considered a > bug. Only DOS and windows 3.1 do that :) > > On 7/25/10, STeve Andre' <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Sunday 25 July 2010 18:40:19 frantisek holop wrote: > >> hmm, on Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 12:12:32AM +0200, David Vasek said that > >> > >> > It is not what happened. The -t msdos was forced by you. But you > >> > >> ah shit. you are right :] > >> > >> and it worked because ffs does not overwrite the beginning > >> of the partition. > >> > >> i misinterpreted what happened, > >> but this is still a problem, right? :] > >> > >> -f > > > > It's a "problem" in that something bad happened, but that is because > > of an operator error. In particular a root operator error: being root > > has the potential for unlimited error. There is no fix or check for > > "rm -rf /", is there. > > > > I've not looked at the code so I can't intelligently comment on what > > checks you can or cannot do, but the fundamental issue is that root > > has to be aware of every command entered, and must be prepared > > to fix *anything*. An OS cannot prevent you from most problems. > > Well, Windows tries, but look at what it feel like to use it... -- STeve Andre' Disease Control Warden Dept. of Political Science Michigan State University A day without Windows is like a day without a nuclear incident.
