File daemons

[Felix Lee]

In <14609 at bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>,
  Steve Summit <scs at adam.pika.mit.edu> writes:
> The obvious fully-general solution is to allow arbitrary functions
> to be attached to files, to perform any kind of authentication
> checking or audit trails that the file's owner might desire.

Scott Schwartz <schwartz at cs.psu.edu> has been randomly working on a
daemon that implements access control lists.  The idea is, if you want
to open a file you don't normally have access to, you ask the daemon
to open it for you, and it will give you an open file descriptor
(after checking the access list).  This can be extended to arbitrary
file hooks, such as audit trails.  Making this transparent is a matter
of replacing open() (and recompiling everything in sight).
--
Felix Lee	flee at shire.cs.psu.edu	*!psuvax1!flee