Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!purdue!decwrl!labrea!polya!shap From: shap@polya.Stanford.EDU (Jonathan S. Shapiro) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Re: diskless NeXT? (was Re: Announcement vs reality) Keywords: Next Message-ID: <5389@polya.Stanford.EDU> Date: 1 Dec 88 19:31:29 GMT References: <17846@glacier.STANFORD.EDU> <3638@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <28185@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <267@aber-cs.UUCP> <28493@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <13977@cisunx.UUCP> <28659@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <2993@cs.Buffalo.EDU> Reply-To: shap@polya.Stanford.EDU (Jonathan S. Shapiro) Distribution: eunet,world Organization: Stanford University Lines: 17 In article <2993@cs.Buffalo.EDU> ugbernie@sunybcs.UUCP (Bernard Bediako) writes: >I don't really understand this point. I thought that each user would have >his OWN optical disk; meaning it did contain an /etc/passwd. >The disk wouldn't contain anyone else's acct. infomation. Someone said they had seen the NeXT boot diskless. If this is so, one could mount root, /usr, /etc etc. from a server, and mount the mopty as something like /untrusted (or something less value laden). One could then prevent corruption entirely on the server by not permitting remote root [individual users] to alter server-provided file systems. They could, in fact, be advertised read-only, leaving swap and /joe on the user's mopty. I think this would address the security problems for file systems. Other concerns, of course, still need good solutions. Jon