topic Re: Is $ SHOW SECURITY confused ? in Operating System - OpenVMS

Is $ SHOW SECURITY confused ?

John Simmonds — Wed, 01 Oct 2003 01:39:52 GMT

I have an OpenVMS Alpha V7.3-1 (with all mandatory patches :) question ..

K$ show secu accs0000 /class=group_global_section

ACCS0000 object of class FILE
Owner: [CATHODE]
Protection: (System: RWED, Owner: RWED, Group: RWED, World: RE)
Access Control List:
(ALARM=SECURITY,ACCESS=READ+WRITE+EXECUTE+DELETE+SUCCESS+FAILURE)

I asked for the GROUP_GLOBAL_SECTION profile, but get class FILE instead !? (This Group Global Section is a file-backed section)

Thanks!

Re: Is $ SHOW SECURITY confused ?

John Gillings — Wed, 01 Oct 2003 15:43:15 GMT

John,

This question would be better handled by logging a case against your support contract.

Re: Is $ SHOW SECURITY confused ?

John Gillings — Mon, 06 Oct 2003 23:28:34 GMT

(Earning my points ;-)

OK, here's what's going on. For a file backed section, the security for the section is the security of the file. See the description of the PROT argument for $CRMPSC in the System Services Reference Manual.
The section GSD$L_ORB points directly to the ORB from the FCB for the backing file.
So, SHOW SECURITY finds the ORB for the object and formats it. Since the ORB in this case is class FILE, that's how it displays.
One could imagine a more complex model, where the section has an independent ORB, with some rules about inheritance or interaction between the section security and the backing file security, but that isn't how OpenVMS engineering chose to implement it.
Spinning this behaviour into a feature... it's telling you where the security profile is derived from.
Non file backed sections have their own ORB and display as GROUP_GLOBAL_SECTION.