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