Re: FTE editor
On Tue, 15 Sep 1998, Daniel Martin wrote:
> "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.
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
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