Re: heimdal on GNU HURD

[Jacques A. Vidrine]

I think  this will be  my last posting on  this topic.  I  don't think
anything useful is  being added now -- you appear  to just be flaming.
I don't really want to encourage that.

On Sat, Sep 29, 2001 at 02:10:50PM -0700, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote:
> My point is that you are willing to deliberately introduce a bug!

I can't follow what you're saying.  I'm not introducing anything.

> > > You really think this is a serious cost in
> > > a program that is doing lots of encryption??
> > 
> > No, I don't -- I just think it is a bug.  One which is easy to fix for
> > the single-threaded case.
> 
> It's a bug to correctly support long hostnames?

You've  chopped too  much.  The  `bug' I  refer to  above is  that the
xgethostname  implementation that  was  forwarded to  me uses  realloc
unnecessarily.  You seem anxious to put words into my mouth.

> I remember when passwords were limited to eight characters.  "What
> possible value is there in a longer password?" we were asked.  We have
> since learned that there is such value.

Much  like   comparing  the   hostname  to   pathnames,  this   is  an
apples-to-oranges comparison.   Besides, since  the system  can define
HOST_NAME_MAX to be any  value larger than _POSIX_HOST_NAME_MAX, there
is no arbitrary limit.  As has  been discussed, this is the reason the
constant was introduced (rather than a hard limit of 255).

> I don't know what possible value there is in huge hostnames.  But I
> have enough humility to know that in nearly every case where there has
> been a fixed limit on the length of a thing, it has turned out to be a
> serious problem, and needed to be fixed.  I expect this case will be
> the same.  

You haven't shown  any humility at all.  Far from  it, you insist that
your point of view is the only possibly valid one.

> Since it's easy to simply handle the case correctly, why not do so?
> Why deliberately cripple the software?

``Have you stopped <dishonourable-practice>  yet?''  I've outlined why
I think having the situation  with gethostname on GNU/Hurd stinks.  We
disagree, but there's no need for an attack.

Cheers,
-- 
Jacques A. Vidrine <n@nectar.com>                   http://www.nectar.com/
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