From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: aps@ieee.org (Armando Stettner) Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2013 09:24:26 -0600 Subject: [TUHS] History of strncpy In-Reply-To: <5CE5BCC9-06CF-423D-AEBA-636952773EDA@ronnatalie.com> References: <5CE5BCC9-06CF-423D-AEBA-636952773EDA@ronnatalie.com> Message-ID: <12408BE9-5FC8-4ECA-93C1-38D27EF1DA23@ieee.org> I also second/support Ron's and uh Clem's view. In addition to zeroing out the inumber field, "removing" a file decremented the reference count in the i-node causing it to be freed (not cleared) when the reference count went to zero. There was no strncpy() in the kernel. Was there a strcpy() (other than a macro) in the kernel?? Long live movtuc. Begin forwarded message: > From: Ronald Natalie > Subject: Re: [TUHS] History of strncpy > Date: January 23, 2013 9:01:04 AM CST > To: Clem Cole > Cc: tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org > > I agree with uh Clem. First off, Nevin's rememberence is wrong. The I-node number was the first two bytes of the V6 directory entry followed by a FIXED 14 spaces for the name (null terminated or not depending on whether the length was there). > > I can guarantee there was no STRNCPY in the kernel, and my memory is with Clem, the V6 and even the phototypesetter versions of the C compiler and libraries didn't have these functions. > By the time Version 7 rolled around, the variable length directories had also appeared in the filesystem. I suspect strcpy arrived with the "portable I/O library", an abomination that eventually evolved into the stdio library and to this day is still stinking up the standard C language. > > Amusingly, removing a file only zeroed out the inumber field. This could lead the creative hacker to leave all sorts of fun messages in the directory by creating and removing files carefully. > We had an alternate shell that was removed for security reasons and one day I found if you did "cat /tmp" there was some noise at the top for the current user of it but then a bunch of new lines and a message that said "Looking for a ghost of nosh?" > > _______________________________________________ > TUHS mailing list > TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org > https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs >