Re: Patch for esound-0.2.19

[James Ralston <qralston+ml.bugtraq () ANDREW CMU EDU>]

On Sat, 23 Sep 2000, Kris Kennaway wrote:
> FreeBSD fixed this (it was the subject of advisory 00:45) by moving
> the ESD_UNIX_SOCKET_DIR into the user's home directory

In general, it's not a good idea to assume that you can create special
files in the user's home directory.

For example, the AFS distributed filesystem does not implement any
special files (sockets, named pipes, or block or character special
devices).  So moving ESD_UNIX_SOCKET_DIR into the user's home
directory, while it might seem like the most straightforward solution,
would simply break esd on systems where a user's home directory is
mounted in AFS.

I haven't inspected esd closely, but I'd guess that this is one of the
reasons why the authors simply didn't locate ESD_UNIX_SOCKET_DIR in
the user's home directory in the first place.

--
James Ralston, Information Technology
Software Engineering Institute
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA