Symbolic user names and RFS

[John Quarterman]

In article <606 at cheviot.uucp> ncx at cheviot.newcastle.ac.uk (Lindsay F. Marshall) writes:
>In article <781 at im4u.UUCP> jsq at im4u.UUCP (John Quarterman) writes:
>>
>>Jumping to conclusions makes for good flames but not good discussions.
>>-- 
>
>What conclusions did I jump to??? I wasnt flaming, I was attempting to
>make a technical point - namely that the statement that a uid scheme
>such as yours was *imperative* for security was manifestly false.

The conclusions about what our uid scheme *is* which you jumped to.
I enumerated the problems in my last article.  Stop flaming long
enough to go read it.  Given Sun's NFS and only Sun's NFS, uniform
uids for all hosts using it are indeed bloody well imperative.

Once again:  we don't use RFS (neither of them), nor the Newcastle
Connection, nor V8.  I'm quite aware that all of them provide ways
of mapping user names into different uids across systems.  Sun's
NFS *DOES NOT PROVIDE ANY SUCH MECHANISM*!  If you want to argue
that that proves we should be using one of the others, I'll say you
may be right.  But stop trying to prove that we should be using a
mechanism which doesn't exist in the file system we're using.
-- 
John Quarterman, UUCP:  {gatech,harvard,ihnp4,pyramid,seismo}!ut-sally!im4u!jsq
ARPA Internet and CSNET:  jsq at im4u.UTEXAS.EDU, jsq at sally.UTEXAS.EDU