From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: pepe@naleco.com (Pepe) Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2014 23:44:22 +0100 Subject: [TUHS] History of chown semantics References: Message-ID: <000f01cf117a$2ba9bbe0$50651bac@naleco.com> On Tuesday, January 14, 2014 2:00 AM [GMT+1=CET], John Cowan wrote: > SZIGETI Szabolcs scripsit: > > > Well, with the same reasoning, we don't need passwords or protection > > bits on files, since I can always take a piece of steel pipe and > > beat the owner, until he gives out the data, so why bother? > > More like beating my argument with a pipe than the owner. > > > Blocking chown for general users is one level of several controls. > > Its specific purpose was to make per-user quotas practical, but since > per-user quotas are as dead as the dodo, it no longer serves any known > purpose. I don't think quotas are dead. It seems nowadays the "preferred" storage backend for email on Unix/Linux mail servers is Maildir, and Maildir uses the filesystem as its own backend, together with the filesystem's quota facility to give or take storage space to/from mailboxes -- yes, provided the users are real system users and not "virtual users", but still. What is "dead as the dodo" is multi-user shell access. But that does not mean multi-user shell access should be removed from modern systems, no matter how dead it may be. -Pepe.