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Re: Bug severities (was: Re: wterm in potato)



On Mon, Feb 21, 2000 at 08:26:02PM +1100, Brian May wrote:
> I think you need to define data loss.
> 
> eg would the deletion of a symlink mean data loss? /usr/local?

Yup.

> What about a command that accidently did (in order from bad to worse):
> 2. find /etc -name "*.bak" | xargs rm -f
> 2. find / -name "*.bak" | xargs rm -f
> would any of these be data loss?

Yes, if done without permission.

> Or how about:
> 1. chown root -R /etc
> 2. chown root -R /
> ?

Yup.

> (the 1st probably wont affect most systems, the 2nd is more serious).
> 
> As none of these commands actually delete data files (might be
> debatable for *.bak files), most are probably rather inconvenient, and
> I would wonder how you would rate these bugs.

Deleting the symlink will damage someone's existing system. Depending on
the skill & knowledge of the person who notices it, the fix might not be
easy. Some people use .bak files for version control, which is their
choice, not debian's. The chown example will cause horrible problems for
e.g., programs suid to things other than root. (In fact that would make
it a security problem as well.) On a file server this could be real
hard to fix up if you've got to restore ownership of thousands of files
owned by thousands of users (some people don't do real good
backups--again, their choice rather than debian's).

-- 
Mike Stone

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