ditto@cbmvax.UUCP (Michael "Ford" Ditto) (01/21/89)
In article <102@gnosys.UUCP> gst@gnosys.UUCP (Gary S. Trujillo) writes: >The one thing I did in addition to what's indicated here is that I made >myself a copy of the floppy filesystem disk from the foundation set, so >that I have someplace to write a small temp file if I need to. (The Fdn. >Set floppy doesn't even have a notch, so it's impossible to write to it, >not that I'd want to anyway.) Strange as it sounds, you CAN create temp files on the write-protected floppy filesystem disk! They go away when you type sync! It's Really bizarre, but the install scripts rely on that ability, so it must have been intentional. -- -=] Ford [=- "The number of Unix installations (In Real Life: Mike Ditto) has grown to 10, with more expected." ford@kenobi.cts.com - The Unix Programmer's Manual, ...!sdcsvax!crash!elgar!ford 2nd Edition, June, 1972. ditto@cbmvax.commodore.com
ditto@cbmvax.UUCP (Michael "Ford" Ditto) (01/25/89)
In article <151@conrad.UUCP> sac@conrad.UUCP (Steven A. Conrad) writes: [ about "writing" on the write-protected installation floppy ] >I doubt it was an intention to enable >writing on a read-only disk. Whether this is actually exploited is >doubtful, since buffer updating may not be predictable. It is exploited in several ways, such as the use of command substitution (backquotes) in the installation scripts. Also, it appears that they disabled write-protect error reporting on the floppy drive rather than modify Unix to allow read-only mounting of the root device. -- -=] Ford [=- "The number of Unix installations (In Real Life: Mike Ditto) has grown to 10, with more expected." ford@kenobi.cts.com - The Unix Programmer's Manual, ...!sdcsvax!crash!elgar!ford 2nd Edition, June, 1972. ditto@cbmvax.commodore.com