Re: setting standard fds to console in translator libs

[Niels Möller]

tb@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:

> We don't want to automatically start all translators with an open
> channel to the console, for the simple reason that not all translators
> are trusted.

Not even a write-only one? I'm not sure I see the security problem. On
debian /dev/console is writable for everybody (although that might not
include the not logged in user on HURD). On Solaris, it seems to be
writable by the group tty. That's all systems I'm logged on to at the
moment.

Or to express things in a different way: If I run a system, I would
probably want to get the stderr output from all translators to go
somewhere. Then, it's reasonable to assume that I have figured out
someplace (/dev/console, special log file, whatever) that I want to
allow any random translator to write to. If stderr is inherited, it
would be enough to redirect the root fs's stderr to make it all work.
If not, I have to configure every translator, and when I forget one,
I'll miss its messages.

/Niels