[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: slashes in filenames [was Re: Error while trying to install openssh-server on Buster]



On 2020-07-24 at 07:45, Greg Wooledge wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 23, 2020 at 07:16:06PM -0400, The Wanderer wrote:
> 
>> On 2020-07-23 at 06:26, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
>>> Seriously? Could you please show me how would I create a file on
>>> *nix containing '/' in the name?
>> 
>> It's theoretically possible, but AFAIK basically nothing would
>> support it or work properly with it.
>> 
>> The only ways I can think of to do it that I wouldn't expect to be 
>> prohibited by the intermediary layers involved (such as the C
>> standard library) would be A: direct file I/O not involving a
>> library (which I'd guess would probably need to be written in
>> architecture-specific ASM), and B: opening the device underlying
>> the filesystem in a hex editor or similar and modifying the stored
>> data in the inode.
> 
> The main way that one gets a filename containing a '/' character in 
> real life is by discovering a bug somewhere.
> 
> I've personally seen it once, on an old HP-UX system that was acting 
> as an NFS server for some Mac clients (long before Mac OS X).
> Apparently the NFS server allowed the clients to create filenames
> with slashes in them, since that's legal on Mac OS 9 and earlier.
> Once such a file was created on the server, you couldn't do
> *anything* to it.  You couldn't delete it, or rename it, or open it.
> The only thing you could do was move out all of the other files in
> the same directory, then rename the directory that it's in to
> something like "xxx_radioactive_waste".  Then recreate the original
> directory, and move all the other files back into it.

Sounds like a case where directly editing the underlying device, to
modify inode-or-equivalent contents such that the slash is no longer
there, might even be *advisable*.

I've seen enough random filename bit-flips in my time that I wouldn't be
surprised if it sometimes happened by simple "routine" filesystem
corruption.

-- 
   The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man.         -- George Bernard Shaw

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature


Reply to: