Re: [9fans] security questions

[erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net>]

have you taken a look at the protection measures already
built into the kernel like smalloc?

> While it may not be perfectly ideal, it allows the administrator to
> maintain control over the system.

being a system adminstrator, i dislike any ideas that require
extra adminstration.  for the same reason, content-based email
filters are impossible to maintain yourself.  you can't keep up
with the threats.

otoh, if you panic because you run out of resources or whatever, the
consequence should be a reboot.  at most you loose some editor
state and need to spend a few minutes logging back in.

if you allow users to log into your fileserver, you're asking
for trouble.

the one resource that does need some fancier managment is
procs.  the problem is that out-of-processes tends to act like
livelock.  it would probablly be an improvement to set
ooprocs variable when out of procs and clear it when some
fraction (say 1/10) becomes free.  then one could panic if
the out-of-processes condition persists for, say, 30 seconds.

(i haven't had this problem since i added some better spam
filtering.)

- erik