[Meego-security-discussion] Quota support

[Wichmann, Mats D]

> If not, how will you keep applications from filling up the filesystem?

Look up "Parkinson's Law". Weep.

> Having a separate filesystem for application storage will help, but
> there will still be a problem with different applications competing for
> disk space.

Can't be helped. No one has ever written a polite application regarding
disk usage. Applications are like seagulls, scanning for free disk blocks
and chanting "Mine! Mine!".

Casey is unfortunately completely correct here.  If the goal is to ensure a malicious application does not intentionally fill up all free space, I don't believe that's possible.  Yes, there can be quotas, but any good hacker can figure out some way to bypass that.

For applications accidentally filling up the filesystem, I believe "Parkinson's Law" is extremely apropos.

> I just discovered that BTRFS has no support for quota currently, so that
> may be another thing to keep in mind.

Hum. Sounds like a project.

Yes it does.  I wonder if someone would like to work on that and feed it upstream so we can incorporate it in MeeGo?


Just musing here...  quotas are a multiuser thing, born in the days of University data centers,
and Meego is pretty fundamentally a single-user thing.  How is a quota going to help me if
an app runs wild (maliciously or unintentionally), running as me, and exceeds my quota?




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