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Re: enforcing DB immutability

From
IMIngo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Date
Apr 20, 2005, 07:49 UTC
Message-ID
<20050420074948.GA22620@elte.hu>
In-Reply-To
<20050420074053.GA22436@elte.hu>
* Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> wrote:
Show 6 quoted lines
> perhaps having a new 'immutable hardlink' feature in the Linux VFS 
> would help? I.e. a hardlink that can only be readonly followed, and 
> can be removed, but cannot be chmod-ed to a writeable hardlink. That i 
> think would be a large enough barrier for editors/build-tools not to 
> play the tricks they already do that makes 'readonly' files virtually 
> meaningless.

immutable hardlinks have the following advantage: a hardlink by design hides the information where the link comes from. So even if an editor wanted to play stupid games and override the immutability - it doesnt know where the DB object is. (sure, it could find it if it wants to, but that needs real messing around - editors wont do _that_)

i think this might work.

(the current chattr +i flag isnt quite what we need though because it works on the inode, and it's also a root-only feature so it puts us back to square one. What would be needed is an immutability flag on hardlinks, settable by unprivileged users.)

	Ingo
Previous: Ingo MolnarNext: Ingo Molnar
Message 9 of 20 in “Re: Index/hash order”
  1. Ingo MolnarApr 13, 2005
  2. H. Peter AnvinApr 13, 2005
  3. Ingo MolnarApr 13, 2005
  4. Ingo MolnarApr 13, 2005
  5. Ingo MolnarApr 13, 2005
  6. Updated base64 patchesH. Peter Anvin, Apr 13, 2005
  7. Linus TorvaldsApr 13, 2005
  8. enforcing DB immutabilityIngo Molnar, Apr 20, 2005
  9. Ingo MolnarApr 20, 2005
  10. Ingo MolnarApr 20, 2005
  11. Chris WedgwoodApr 20, 2005
  12. Nick Craig-WoodApr 20, 2005
  13. WoutApr 27, 2005
  14. Linus TorvaldsApr 13, 2005
  15. Baruch EvenApr 13, 2005
  16. Florian WeimerApr 13, 2005
  17. Linus TorvaldsApr 13, 2005
  18. Florian WeimerApr 13, 2005
  19. Ingo MolnarApr 14, 2005
  20. cache-cold repository performanceIngo Molnar, Apr 14, 2005

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