Re: [9fans] Factotum vs SASL

[erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net>]

> In my scenario, I'm (more precisely: the account I'm using) not the
> hostowner, just a plain user - in Unix terms: non-root). But that
> account has the special privileges of controlling the network
> connections. Other accounts may only choose from a predefined list
> of connections.

if you've logged into a plan 9 terminal, then you *are* the hostowner.
this is a non-problem.

"in Unix terms" doesn't work here.  root != hostowner.  they are very
different concepts.

> The network itself is controlled by some separate service (eg. network
> manager - which eg. comes quite handy for travelers, etc). Now we need
> to decide which accounts may control it or just see some status.

again, this is not how a plan 9 box would work.  when you log into the
machine, you own all the h/w.  you can do what you want.

> A traditional unix/linux approach (for local-only) would be handling
> that via groups and file permissions for the command sockets. The
> decision then would be done on login time, as the uids and gids are
> set here.

again, ...

> For a plan9-alike approach, I could imagine something where the
> factotums handle everything, so the service finally just sees an
> pseudo-user or role, and the host-factotum does the translation,
> based on some table (similar to /etc/group). For the network-manager
> example, there could be roles like "network-admin", "network-ctrl",
> "network-stat". Maybe we could even extend the factotum protocol,
> so it directly supports roles.

no factotum need apply.  :-)

- erik