Linus Torvalds did call the incompatible interface change to the
SCSI generic intercase (he applied last year around August)
a "Security Fix".
The modification was done by him overnight and without disussion
with the involved authors/maintainers. He was told at that time
that there was a better way to fix the security hole he did mention
as the reason for his incompatible interface change to Linux.
The right way to fix the problem, Linus did like to address, would be
to disallow sending SCSI generic commands on readonly file
descriptors (but to require a fd that is open for R/W) instead of
filtering away SCSI commands that Linus (a person without SCSI
experiences) believes to be risky.
I am happy to see that your experience proves that this poor
hack does not even do what it is supposed to do.....as there is
a way to circumvent blocking SCSI commands Linus Torvalds does
not like be allowed.
If you like to understand the background of the basic problem that
repeatedly causes similar problems on Linux, have a look at:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/linuxunix/0,39020390,39189593,00.htm
I did warn of this way of maintaining the Linux kernel for several
years now and have been attacked by people including Alan Cox because
of my alerts. May be there is hope for a change now that Alan Cox did grok
the problem.
Meanwhile, I recommend (see also cdrecord warning messages) to go back
to Linux-2.4 or to switch to Solaris. Solaris 10 is free to use (as free beer)
for any usage since February 1st and OpenSolaris sources will come with
an OSI aproved license in a few weeks (then Solaris will be in addition
be free as free speech).
I am using Solaris as my primary development platform because I get
the needed error/return codes for SCSI commands on Solaris I still
don't get on Linux and because Solaris gives you better free debugging
tools. Solaris 10 has no known issues with CD/DVD writing....
Jörg
--
EMail:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (uni)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
