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SubjectRe: NTFS safety and lack thereof - Was: Re: Linux 2.4.0ac11
At 17:03 24/01/01, Timur Tabi wrote:
>** Reply to message from Anton Altaparmakov <aia21@cam.ac.uk> on Wed, 24 Jan
>2001 16:54:36 +0000
>
> > >Is read access safe ?
> >
> > Of course read-only is safe. As long as you mount the partition READ-ONLY
> > nothing can happen to it in any way, your NTFS data is at least safe.
>
>Isn't it still theoretcially possible for the driver to send commands to the
>disk controller that cause data to become overwritten, even when it's just
>supposed to read that data?

Theoretically it is also possible that all quantums in my body decide to
tunnel through space-time at exactly the same time and with the exactly
same direction and speed vector for exactly the same duration of time and
that I am suddenly effectively teleported to the surface of the moon. (-:

But that doesn't mean it's going to happen...

Seriously, it is a theoretical possibility but a practical impossibility in
my opinion and to the best of my knowledge of the current driver it will
not communicate with any hardware directly in any way. In fact it only
performs writes by dirtying buffer cache buffers which get written back by
the kernel proper. ll_rw_block() never gets called directly and neither
does generic_make_request() and block_write_full_page() isn't at the moment
either. (Anything I missed?) Also, when you compile the driver without the
write support enabled, you are almost 100% sure even a major bug in the
driver will not cause any writes.

And no, the driver is not a virus nor a trojan nor does it have any
intelligence to suddenly decide to write things when it isn't asked to...

NOTE: Please don't take my comments personally / too seriously but I
couldn't resist... Follow-ups to alt.silly.* please...

Regards,

Anton


--
"Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he
learned in school." - Albert Einstein
--
Anton Altaparmakov Voice: +44-(0)1223-333541(lab) / +44-(0)7712-632205(mobile)
Christ's College eMail: AntonA@bigfoot.com / aia21@cam.ac.uk
Cambridge CB2 3BU ICQ: 8561279
United Kingdom WWW: http://www-stu.christs.cam.ac.uk/~aia21/

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