Re: OSS nice tmp race

From: Crispin Cowan (crispinat_private)
Date: Sun Dec 20 1998 - 14:53:09 PST

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    Joel Eriksson wrote:
    
    > There are of course cases where it's not this easy to get rid of the need
    > for a temporary file, the best way to fix this problem I think would be if
    > all users had their own private tmp-directory. I have heard of patches
    > that makes /tmp to a pseudo-directory that is "private" for each user
    > that may be useful (I think it was for Linux, but I don't think it is
    > widely spread).
    >
    > Since programmers keep repeating the old mistakes over and over again, the
    > responsibility is ultimately the users. One can't check all of the
    > sourcecode that we compile (at least not as thouroughly that may be
    > needed), but eliminating the possibility of certain common bugs from
    > having any dangerous implications is a first step. I think solutions like
    > StackGuard and the like is of great use when it comes to this.
    
    Thanks for the plug!  Unfortunately, I haven't thought of any StackGuard-like techniques for
    treating race conditions.  Matt Bishop's excellent paper on race condtions has some reasons why
    race conditions are un-decidable at the compiler level.
    
    Crispin
    -----
     Crispin Cowan, Research Assistant Professor of Computer Science, OGI
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