Re: Proposal: Inhibit "console down"

At Fri, 10 Aug 2007 11:04:20 -0700, Bryan Stansell wrote:
Subject: Re: Proposal: Inhibit "console down"
> 
> Yep...I certainly like it.  It goes along with the other recent post
> about preventing folks from turning off logging.  Both should be doable.

It seems to me that run-time logging control through the client user
interface is way far out of the design goals of any good console server.
In fact I would say it would be antithetical to the design of a good
console server.  It should _always_ be _impossible_ for any user of any
compatible client program user to affect the logging configuration.

It also seems to me that if any client user wants an extra copy of the
log of what they've done then I'm sure they can just learn to use the
common tools that already exist for such purposes, such as the
aforementioned "script" utility.

Creeping featurism for such obviously bad and/or unnecessary ideas is
never a good thing, especially when some forms of decent security
policies become impossible to implement as a result.  The best way to
make security easy from the get go is to follow the KISS principle
foremost.

The original subject of this thread, the proposed ability to inhibit
"console down" is also an indication of a design flaw.  Turning down a
console port is not really something that should be controllable from
the client protocol in the first place.  (However the converse,
triggering an attempt to bring the console up again is a very useful
feature to have in any console client.)

-- 
						Greg A. Woods

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