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Date: Sun,  3 Jul 2011 15:51:17 -0600
Message-ID: <CAK4xykWmB8KTN0J+nFxRAsEA1YFeyoT9Zn96fiWgqy7xePayRA@mail.gmail.com>
From: andrey mirtchovski <mirtchovski@gmail.com>
To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Subject: Re: [9fans] novel userspace paradigms introduced by plan 9
Topicbox-Message-UUID: f9abfd00-ead6-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025

as a person who has spent the last three years exclusively in
user-level filesystems on Linux, I can safely say this -- my biggest
problem during that time has been the root user. from dealing with
programs which allow only root-level access (xen tools) to dealing
with programs who explicitly disallow root (PBS/torque) much more of
my time has been spent twiddling with permissions, sudo config scripts
and everything else involving root than actually writing the synthetic
user-level file system and getting it running.

it appears that every cluster of programs used to do anything
systems-y in Linux has a special view of uid 0 -- some revere it,
others fear it, but no two treat it the same way. only one piece of
software said "chgrp my device file to whoever you want to use it and
be free". it felt very Plan9-ey.