Re: [9fans] an idea

[Fco.J.Ballesteros <nemo@lsub.org>]

> one of the beauties of 9p is the fact that it is completely transport
> independent - just so long as you've got that single channel
> (whatever it's over), you've got access to the capabilities
> at the other end.

I know, and that's also why in general you can't reproduce a ns at
a remote location. However, if you make all your servers responsive at
a network address, you are one step closer to do that.

> hence it makes sense, i think, to have a protocol that can encapsulate
> the idea of introducing new users *within* a namespace.

Your point makes sense to me. But I think it's not too radical to solve
the (few) problems that bother me while using plan 9. The one I mention
above is one of them. My argument is that if we ever get into changing
the name space, I'd try to fix some other problems too.

>> A regular  /dev (or whatever) directory with
>> one mounted file|dir per device would be cleaner. Instead of doing the
>> #s trick, newns() could return not a clean namespace, but one with
>> devices installed. To do sandboxing one could unmount from there whatever
>> is not wanted.
> 
> how would newns() (which is not a system call) get access to those
> devices? and if a process is in a sandbox, what's to stop
> it doing a newns() and getting access to those devices anyway.

Sorry, by newns() I meant rfork(RFCNAMEG). It can access them because it's
the kernel.
Also, RFNOMNT would prevent your sandbox to break.