[Texmacs-dev] Re: Privacy considerations

[Joris van der Hoeven]

All temporary files are now created in ~/.TeXmacs/system and
most of them in ~/.TeXmacs/system/tmp.

Now I agree more or less with what you say below.
However, I don't know of any safe Unix command which
creates temporary file names for me.
Notice nevertheless that you may make ~/.TeXmacs/system/tmp
a symbolic link to whatever safe directory you want...

There are a few circumstances where people may want to
inspect their temporary files though. For instance,
when compiling a bibliography and something goes wrong,
then the current solution allows us to inspect
the temporary files...

----------------------------------------------------------
On Thu, 17 Apr 2003, Norbert Nemec wrote:
> On Donnerstag, 17. April 2003 11:06, Joris van der Hoeven wrote:
> > At the moment, we put everything in ~/.TeXmacs, except for
> > temporary files, which are created using tmpnam (this is indeed unsafe).
>
> Well, as long as they are below /tmp, there is no danger. I don't worry about
> people breaking into my running notebook. The thing I want to be safe against
> is someone stealing it and rebooting it from CD or even physically examine
> the HD to recover data. Since /tmp is a tmpfs and swap is of, the data there
> is safe.
>
> > Nevertheless, temporary files are mostly used for not-so-important data,
> > like the conversion of images. Also, we soon plan to put all temporary
> > files in ~/.TeXmacs/system.
>
> I think that is not such a good idea. /tmp is there just for that purpose, so
> why not use it? (independantly of my own paranoid security demands)
>
> The home directory is good for everything that should last. Anyhow, there may
> be strict quota, or it may only be accessible via a slow NFS connection.
> Therefore the local /tmp directory usually is the better place.
>
> > As to printing: we create a .ps files in
> > ~/.TeXmacs/system and print it using the lpr or a user-defined command.
>
> Same thing as above: /tmp would clearly be the better place for that IMO. (Of
> course, if a user wants to export the .ps, it should not go to /tmp as
> default, but that is a different matter than a temporary .ps file used for
> printing only.
>
> --
> ______________________Norbert Nemec <address@hidden>
>
>     Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany
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