Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!daemon
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
From: thomson@hub.toronto.edu (Brian Thomson)
Subject: Re: Two identical filenames in one directory!
Message-ID: <8909300118.AA09366@beaches.hub.toronto.edu>
Sender: 
Organization: University of Toronto
References: <22@minya.UUCP> <2516@auspex.auspex.com>
Date: 30 Sep 89 01:20:52 GMT

In article <2516@auspex.auspex.com> guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) writes:
>And on earlier versions, root *can* write a directory?  Wrong.  The only
>way "root" can write a directory - on V6, V7, S3, S5, or 4.xBSD, or on
>most if not all UNIXes derived therefrom - is to open the raw disk and
>stomp on the file. 

Hmm.  In my ongoing effort to further the cause of picking nits,
I offer the following:

1) In both V6 and V7, root is able to write a newly creat()'ed directory.
   This is how mkdir used to make the . and .. entries.

2) In V6, if you were unlucky enough to have a directory named 'core'
   and ran a sickly setuid-root program too near to it, you would discover
   yet another way that root could write a directory.
-- 
		    Brian Thomson,	    CSRI Univ. of Toronto
		    utcsri!uthub!thomson, thomson@hub.toronto.edu