Re: SEUL: X/Berlin/db, and reinventing wheels

[Erik Walthinsen <omega@aracnet.com>]

> gdbm?  Isn't that a little *too* simple?

Possibly.  I have only used it indirectly, so I don't know much about it.  
Will research, though.  Stay tuned.


> But if all apps have direct access to the gdbm library, couldn't they
> call their names whatever they want?  I don't see a way to enforce a
> namespace.  (This has to work with SEUL compliant apps besides the ones
> we write.)

One reason to not use a standard library.  But, we'd define the format 
somewhat obscurely and only allow access through the library.  We could play 
permissions games too.  If we ever get suid libraries, the file could even be 
owned by root with umask 033, then only the library can change it.  No, 
that'd be messy, as the user would be stuck with that lib *only*.  We could 
just set it's perms to 600, let the library work around that, and hope that 
no one is malicious enough to write an app that'd change the perms, screw 
around with it, and change them back.  Hey, if they forget the last part 
(change back) the library could catch that as illegal perms and squawk some...


> Actually I was thinking something like Doze 3.x .INI files.  They're
> quick, relatively straightforward, ASCII text, and allow two heirarchy
> levels.

Maybe a little too simple.  The end user will never touch/see this, so we can 
do anything we need to.  I think we can define something that's more useful 
than INI stuff, and do it much more efficiently...


> Ok.......then I guess we could set up a system so that a user could log
> into any computer on the network and the registry would go with it? 
> That would be kind of sweet.

Would be cool, but consider this: in a large corp network, most sites will 
want the home dirs to be located on the server.  Thus, if all the clients run 
NIS or similar, they can log into any machine and their config follows them 
via NFS mount.

I still like the idea, after my struggles with Xauth...  If there's a case 
where it can help, I say implement it.  Plan for it anyway...

TTYAL,
     Omega

        Erik Walthinsen - Webmaster and infrastructure for SEUL    __
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