Re: [logs] Filesystem for logging

From: Marcus J. Ranum (mjrat_private)
Date: Tue Dec 17 2002 - 13:30:02 PST

  • Next message: Michael C. Ibarra: "Re: [logs] Tamper Proof Logging"

    listuser wrote:
    >Now for a wierd idea, How about making an FS exclusievly for logging. An FS which will not support any editing of data once written, ie only appending, which computes a hash of each line and stores them seperatly in another file etc. I am thinking about it now, may be, I might get some time to try to implement atlest some part of it. 
    
    It'd probably be more effort than it's worth. General purpose
    computers are cheap enough nowadays that it's easier to throw
    hardware entities at a problem than to make major kernel changes
    (and you'd still have to deal with securing the platform)
    
    How's this for a goofy idea: build a PC that's a write-only log
    disk device. It'd plug into the firewire port of another PC and
    present a queuing file system as a storage device. The queuing
    file system would allow creates, appends, and renames but no
    truncates, deletes, or file time updates. The queing directory
    might be a RAID (why not) if you care and you might (optionally)
    have an expiration process that controls how long files are kept
    on the system before they are removed. The system could keep
    hashes, and could do backups to DVD-RAM, etc. If the thing looks
    like a big hard disk and only implements the hard disk interfaces,
    then it'd be pretty much tamper-proof.
    
    I don't know enough about USB and firewire - can a PC act as a
    client device as well as a server? I know you can do networking
    over firewire so it ought to be possible..
    
    mjr. 
    ---
    Marcus J. Ranum				http://www.ranum.com
    Computer and Communications Security	mjrat_private
    
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