what to do when you've been rooted

Rick Moen rick at linuxmafia.com
Mon Jan 22 12:18:04 PST 2001


begin  E Frank Ball quotation:

> Absolutely.  Do you *NEED* to run a ftp daemon? 

Yes, I do.

Show me a httpd that discloses special file attributes (notably symlink
as opposed to hard link) and other file details -- and wake me up when
all Linux distributions can do http installs in addition to ftp, and
when small http clients capable of doing recursive gets ship on the
general run of consumer operating systems.

On the latter point, it was impossible to install Debian-m68k on my Mac
IIci without my *ix box's ftpd, because of tools I had to pull down onto
the LAN directly onto the IIci's small HFS/MacOS partition.  I didn't
have wget or lynx or scp, and retrieving a friggin' graphical Web
browser would have been just a bit absurd.

> Most are nothing but security holes waiting to be found.

Most are _irrelevant_ to a discussion that excludes the ridiculously
bloated ones, e.g., wu-ftpd and proftpd.  A relevant examination might
concern, e.g., oftpd, Ranum's aftpd, hftpd, pftpd, and trollftpd.

-- 
Cheers,                                      "Reality is not optional."
Rick Moen                                             -- Thomas Sowell
rick at linuxmafia.com



More information about the talk mailing list