Re: /var/run/

On Sat, Jan 06, 2007 at 12:29:26AM -0600, Scott Walde wrote:
> Conrad Knauer wrote:
>
> >On 1/5/07, Scott Walde <scott@waldetech.ca> wrote:
> >
> >>It seems to me that Upstart is running contrary to the basic philosophy
> >>of Unix:
> >>
> >>(i) Make each program do one thing well. To do a new job, build afresh
> >>rather than complicate old programs by adding new features.
> >> - Doug McIlroy (/The Bell System Technical Journal)
> >
> >
> >Not that I know too much about the deep inner workings of a Linux
> >system, but from what I have read about upstart, it sounds like its
> >actually doing just that. Certainly they are building anew with
> >upstart, rather than adding another layer onto something. In
> >addition, they are apparently arguing that there is really only one
> >job being done but that it is currently being divided up among several
> >programs, creating unnecessary overlap. Consider the "Rationale"
> >section of https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReplacementInitDiscussion
>
>
> I still fail to see how at/anacron/cron and inetd and init are
> variations of the same task, other than the most vague idea that "they
> are all ways of starting programs/services." (so is the command line...
> are we somehow going to move that into upstart too?) Their functions
> are quite different. I stand by my statement that putting
> at/cron/anacron/inetd functionality into upstart is contrary to the KISS
> principle.
>
> The idea of having PID 1 listening on a few dozen ports just seems a
> little scary to me.

The idea of any monolithic program listening on a few dozen network ports
is scary, as is any program responsible for managing many task along with
extra stuff.

I concur, there are good reasons to replace the init scripts with something
better and perhaps the way things are started/stopped/restarted could be
common for several tools but one tool running with privileges managing all
that stuff is silly. The day Window became insecure was the day MS started
pushing all the userland tools into system space. BIND has been rewritten
several times and still hasn't eliminated all the security problems
associated with it's monolithic design.

In comparison, how often do we see exploits for ls, head, cat, etc.?
Received on Sat Jan 6 13:52:11 2007