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Re: pmud and gkrellm on tcp???



On Tue, Oct 17, 2000 at 03:06:31PM +0100, Sergio Brandano wrote:
<snip>
> >On another note, you may wish to reconsider your choice of tone in
> >future emails.
> 
>  Oh, sweet heart.. I did not mean to be rude! I ONLY have the status
>  of my machine BROADCASTED by a tcp/ip service!!!
> 

I really don't know why I'm bothering to reply to this.  Get off your paranoid
guilt trip and get real - you obviously didn't even bother to try and
understand what I've said.  Sarcasm is also very unattractive, particularly in
email.  It is even more unattractive when it insinuates that you admit to
actually being rude (which is the reality).


Let me make it quite clear:

1. Information is not broadcasted.  It is available upon connection to the
   particular port and interface that pmud is listening on.  

2. This interface and port is ONLY accessable from the LOCALHOST.  This means
   it CANNOT be reached from any other machine, and hence only by local users.
   
   And before you say anything about local users being too broad a scope, take
   a look in /proc and see what other system stats they have available.
   

> > The authors of these programs have done so without pay, benefit or
> > training, and should be respected for that.
> 
>  Oh really? Let us have a nice gkrellm plugin, and may be also some
>  nice kernel routines and cool packages that broadcast the content of
>  my monitor via an "unknown" tcp/ip service. On the same principle of
>  pmud, why not putting the mail of the whole system on a tcp/ip
>  service, so that clients can connect to it and read it! And let be
>  all excited about it! ARE WE NUTS???

The tcp/ip service is _not_ "unknown".  It is documented and the code is
available.

Also, the principle of pmud is to provide information on power stats to only 
the people who should be able to get them - which are the local users.  This
is exactly what the current system does.  It is not providing information to
people who should not have access to it.


> 
>  So much for security and control over an UNIX system!!!

NO GUARANTEES of any security or control will be given to you by members of
the debian project or by developers of pmud and other applications.  If you
need these sorts of guarantees, go buy a support contract or insurance from a
company (although I can't think of any that will give you this sort of
guarantee).  However most of us use what skills we have learned to try and
ensure that what we produce is both secure and useful.  We don't always get it
right, but we do the best we can.

As I have already said, most of the authors, developers and maintainers of the
software that comprises a GNU/Linux operating system have done so without pay,
benefit or training, and _should be respected for that_.  It is NOT
appropriate to take this sort of approach and critisize their efforts without
any help or suggestions.  You have NOT authored any of this code, nor offered
alternatives for how it should be done - nor have you contracted or paid any
of the authors to provide you with specific services, documentation, features
or service level contracts.

I am telling you that the way pmud works is, in my opinion, perfectly
reasonable and appears quite benign.  If your opinion differs then I suggest
you stop wining about it and author some code to replace it.

This will be my last email on this topic.  I'm sorry I've wasted my time thus
far.

Chris



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