[4394] in Athena Bugs
addendum to bug "file permissions.."
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Barr3y Jaspan)
Sun Mar 4 13:22:17 1990
Date: Sun, 4 Mar 90 13:22:01 -0500
From: Barr3y Jaspan <bjaspan@ATHENA.MIT.EDU>
To: bugs@ATHENA.MIT.EDU, athena_ws@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
setenv ALMOST_FLAME_MODE
Well, I was just reminded about the "shrinkwrap quota" system that
caused the "Disc quota exceeded" message I reported as a bug a moment
ago. (ie: I don't have a quota in Aphrodite so I can't write to the
gsp locker, even though it is group writable.)
I understand that this system is being used to prevent people from
storing files on other people's accounts and no one getting docked for
it. However, this is a good example of the cure being worse than the
disease -- I do not consider disabling the entire group permission
mechanism an acceptable solution. In fact, the word "intolerable"
comes to mind.
For Athena to claim that it supports group projects (such as
courseware development.. and we DO claim to support that, don't we?)
the situation *must* be fixed. Two solutions come to mind:
1) Allow anyone who wants to use group access mechanisms to have an
AFS filesystem, with the understanding that AFS is still experimental
and (possibly) without nightly backups.
2) Disable the shrinkwrap quota system entirely, and use some other
method (for example, a shell script) to determine when users are
storing files on other users accounts.
Both of these solutions can be implemented without waiting for a new
release and (at least one of them) should be.
unsetenv ALMOST_FLAME_MODE
Barr3y
