On Tue, 15 Sep 1998, Daniel Martin wrote:
> "Paul M. Foster" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > Debs: > <SNIP> > > Two questions: > > > > 1) Is this a dangerous thing (I know of no other Linux editors that > > access the terminal this way)? > Accessing the terminal in this way? In itself no; in fact, if all > access is done through /dev/vcsa*, there's not the chance of leaving > your console in the "lowercase characters appear as line-drawing > characters" mode. However, using an untested program as root is just > one of those generally unadvised actions. If the "lowercase characters..." problem happens, I usually "reset" or "clear" and try to fix it that way. But yes, testing as root is dicey, hence the following question... > > > 2) Is there a liability to changing the permissions on these device files > > so that regular users have r/w access to them? > Well, how comfortable are you with the ability of anyone logged in (or > even with a process running) on your machine being able to grab the > contents of any of the virtual consoles? If you do this, then anyone > will be able to grab anything that appears on the screen. It's not as > bad as xhost +, since they won't be able to send keys to, say, your > root shell, but the ability to log everything may be a bit unnerving. > Also, there's major nuisance potential since they could make any > virtual screen display anything. > In my case, it isn't a problem, since it is a single user machine on a network, with my wife running Win95 on the other machine. But I see the point. So presumably, if someone could write something to /dev/vcsa*, it would show up on my screen. Hm. Up until I unpacked this editor, I hadn't even heard of /dev/vcsa*. Paul
