Re: Goings on with Web clients

[zblaxell () miranda uwaterloo ca (Zygo Blaxell)]

Quoted from System Administrator:
> The following handy little piece shows a minor problem with netscape and
> most other browsers.. they aren't cautious about special files -eg
>
>         <A href="file:/dev/mouse">Click here to break your mouse</A>

All the more reason to make sure that it's mode 600, owner root, and
'rm -f' svgalib and friends (for non-Linux types, svgalib is a graphics
library that requires extended access privileges to directly manipulate
video hardware on PCs.  Advantages are avoidance of X overhead and
the speed & freedom of direct frame-buffer access.  Common svgalib-
based programs also need access to remap the keyboard, take control of
virtual console switching away from the in-kernel VT220 emulator,
and lots of other features I remove from my kernel source code before
compiling it).

> and of course /dev/zero ... fortunately it seems on most systems netscape
> core dumps or is using mmap and thus maps forever(almost) then I would
> presume if you had the patience 8) dumps neatly.

/proc/kcore, kmesg and others are fun things to load into your browser
as well, not to mention your own stdin...


--
Zygo Blaxell, former sysadmin and current software/hardware guru for the
University of Waterloo Computer Science Club; current sysadmin for miranda.
uwaterloo.ca and ezmail.com.  10th place team, ACM Intl Finals Programming
Contest 1994.  Will administer Unix (esp. Linux, maybe Solaris) for food.