Re: [RFC] User Accesable Filesystem Hierarchy Standard

I really don't like this proposal.  Aside from what
the other two gentlemen have had to say, I think it
totally approaches the problem from the wrong way. 
You would never want to put something in a user's home
directory that would be shared.  You're ASKING for
problems in a multi-user environment.

(Actually, you're asking for problems by allowing
non-administrator users to install software, period,
and this should only be implemented in a 'home user'
environment where software installation is typically
supervised anyhow).  The entire notion put forward
tends to remove many of the safeguards inherent to
linux right now (ASSUMING you don't give root access
to every user who accesses the machine).  

That being said, however, I would suggest simply
creating a 'chroot' type environment someplace like
/usr/root which would be rwx for group <arbitrary
name>"usr" and place all users in this group as a
secondary group.  This will allow the home directory
to remain closed to all but the owner.   Standard
/etc, /usr, /var and /opt may be created here and
proper executable directories added to the PATH.  If
more granularity is required, break the /usr/bin
directory down into subdirectories named for the user
doing the install.  This would provide the users the
ability to add whichever users' /usr/bin to their path
as they choose.

configure scripts expect everything to be situated
properly on top of a --prefix, so in general, this
simply requires changing the standard prefix to
/usr/root/usr/

point being, rather than creating 300 ~/.etc
directories (1 for each of 300 theoretical users),
let's create ONE /usr/root/etc that's rwx for all 300.
 In the end, you're asking for the traditional
problems of multiple users overwriting each others'
changes.. but apparently this is more desirable than
the current situation.

I'm currently only copying this to devel-list.

Z

On Saturday 27 March 2004 05:34 pm, you wrote:
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>
> This is a proposal for a standard to accommodate the
accessibility of the
> filesystem by end-users. We request discussion on
this as a new standard.
> The URL to get to the document is:
>
> http://www.csis.gvsu.edu/~abreschm/uafhs/
>
> I am a member of the Ark Linux team, who is
interested in seeing the Linux
> desktop become a viable option. I apologize for the
cross-posting.
>
> - --
> Gary L. Greene, Jr.
> Sent from uriel.gvsu.edu
>   5:23pm  up   4:38,  5 users,  load average: 0.16,
0.16, 0.11
>
============================================================
> Founder and president of the Grand Valley Linux
Users Group
>  check out http://www.gvlug.org/ for more info.
>
> PHONE : (616) 331-0849
> EMAIL : [email protected] (my Ark Linux account)
> EMAIL : [email protected] (my student
account)
>
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