Re: FTE editor

[Daniel Martin <dtm12@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu>]

"Paul M. Foster" <paulf@quillandmouse.com> 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.
 
> 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.