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Groups > comp.sys.mac.system > #69206

Re: Linus rant on HFS+

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On 2015-01-28 04:52:18 +0000, Kevin McMurtrie said:

> In article <cilld1Fd18aU3@mid.individual.net>,
>  Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com> wrote:
> 
>> On 2015-01-26, JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Linus Torvalds: Apple's HFS+ is probably the worst file system ever
>>> 
>>>> http://www.itworld.com/article/2868393/linus-torvalds-apples-hfs-is-probabl
>>>> y-the-worst-file-system-ever.html
>>> 
>>> 
>>> His hate of HFS+ seems to be focus on its case insensitive nature.
>>> 
>>> Aside from Linus "slight" bias against Apple and HFS+, is there anything
>>> that supports his rant that case insensitive makes for bad file system ?
>>> 
>>> The only thing I could think of is the overhead of having to store the
>>> file name in a normalised fashion (for lookups) and the original
>>> case-preserved filename which is displayed.  (I assume this is how it
>>> works).
>>> 
>>> Is this significant ?
>> 
>> If you have to ask...
>> 
>> The author of the article asserts that case insensitivity "causes a lot
>> of problems", but I have yet to see these supposed problems in the
>> almost 30 years of using HFS in Mac OS. How has it "caused problems" for
>> you?
>> 
>> Useless troll. Good work.
> 
> You don't see any problems because you're totally incapable of
> researching, or even believing that MacOS bugs exist.
> 
> Back when Apple made servers, case insensitivity and numerous unicode
> bugs were found to an actively exploited vulnerability.  Most servers
> have a blacklist for files that may contain sensitive data in a public
> access area.  For example, .htaccess, WEB-INF, .git, .svn, and
> .DS_Store.  Reading or writing those paths with a different case was all
> it took to bypass blacklists.  Even when blacklists were made case
> insensitive, unicode bugs in HFS+ could be exploited with the same
> outcome.

That's a problem of how you construct a blacklist in the context of a 
case insensitive file system, not of the filesytem itself.

> 
> 
> Modern server software will ask the OS to resolve a path and then
> compare that with the original request to see if it has changed, but
> that's not an exact solution.  It's quite complex when you have a mix of
> valid and invalid unicode transformations happening.  Linus was recently
> cursing about these exploits that took advantage of DOS support in
> Windows and unicode bugs in HFS+ to bypass GIT's file blacklists:
> 
> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1853266

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Thread

Linus rant on HFS+ JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> - 2015-01-25 20:46 -0500
  Re: Linus rant on HFS+ Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com> - 2015-01-26 02:00 +0000
    Re: Linus rant on HFS+ JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> - 2015-01-26 12:30 -0500
      Re: Linus rant on HFS+ Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com> - 2015-01-26 17:40 +0000
      Re: Linus rant on HFS+ Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com> - 2015-01-26 17:45 +0000
        Re: Linus rant on HFS+ Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com> - 2015-01-26 17:47 +0000
    Re: Linus rant on HFS+ Kevin McMurtrie <mcmurtrie@pixelmemory.us> - 2015-01-27 20:52 -0800
      Re: Linus rant on HFS+ Electric Comet <electric-comet@mail.invalid> - 2015-01-27 21:11 -0800
        Re: Linus rant on HFS+ Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com> - 2015-01-28 15:01 +0000
          Re: Linus rant on HFS+ Joanna Shuttleworth <js@example.com> - 2015-01-29 08:14 +0000
            Re: Linus rant on HFS+ Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com> - 2015-01-29 15:17 +0000
      Re: Linus rant on HFS+ Alan Baker <alangbaker@telus.net> - 2015-01-27 22:39 -0800
      Re: Linus rant on HFS+ Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com> - 2015-01-28 14:59 +0000
      Re: Linus rant on HFS+ Davoud <star@sky.net> - 2015-01-28 12:21 -0500
        Re: Linus rant on HFS+ Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com> - 2015-01-28 17:32 +0000
  Re: Linus rant on HFS+ nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid> - 2015-01-25 21:13 -0500
  Re: Linus rant on HFS+ Jerry Bishop <jerry.bishop@nowhere.nohow.com> - 2015-01-26 14:52 -0500
    Re: Linus rant on HFS+ Your Name <YourName@YourISP.com> - 2015-01-27 09:27 +1300
    Re: Linus rant on HFS+ Davoud <star@sky.net> - 2015-01-26 15:36 -0500
      Re: Linus rant on HFS+ Electric Comet <electric-comet@mail.invalid> - 2015-01-28 13:45 -0800
        Re: Linus rant on HFS+ Alan Baker <alangbaker@telus.net> - 2015-01-28 13:52 -0800
        Re: Linus rant on HFS+ Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> - 2015-01-28 22:14 +0000
          Re: Linus rant on HFS+ Electric Comet <electric-comet@mail.invalid> - 2015-01-28 18:53 -0800
            Re: Linus rant on HFS+ Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> - 2015-01-29 10:47 +0000
    Re: Linus rant on HFS+ Electric Comet <electric-comet@mail.invalid> - 2015-01-26 16:38 -0800

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