Permissions on key directories/files.

[George]

On Sun, Mar 21, 2004 at 12:26:39AM +0100, Waldo Bastian wrote:
> failing hard and printing a meaningful error message is secure IMHO.

This is not an acceptable solution for a desktop system.  Especially if there
is a seamless recovery that is both secure and does not even have to bother
the user.  The /tmp directory does get whacked quite often on some systems,
it is not part of any installation.  In any case, for a desktop system,
NOTHING should just print an error and fail hard unless there is absolutely
no possible recovery.  Things do go wrong in practice for whatever reasons,
and Joe User is not going to log in on a text console and read the syslog
with vi.

> As far as the robustness goes, if you delete or corrupt random files out 
> of /lib your system will not work either, get over it.

Nothing is guaranteed for /tmp, scripts regularly even wipe this directory.
/lib is completely different story.

George

-- 
George <jirka at 5z.com>
   When the rich make war it's the poor that die.
                       -- Jean-Paul Sartre