[cfarm-users] Future of cfarm186/cfarm187/cfarm188 at OSUOSL

[Peter Gutmann]

Jeffrey Walton via cfarm-users <cfarm-users at lists.tetaneutral.net> writes:

>First, Hurd lacks PATH_MAX and friends, and it is a surprise to some program
>authors, and a pain in the butt for package maintainers and porters.  Also see
><https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/community/gsoc/project_ideas/maxpath.html>.

That's Gnu all over:

  Systems only should define them if they actually have such fixed limits (see
  limits.h). The Hurd, following the GNU Coding Standards, tries to avoid this
  kind of arbitrary limits, and consequently doesn't define the macros.

Translated, "we're special, and we're going to let everyone know we're special
by making sure their code breaks".

  Fixing these issues usually boils down to replacing char foo[PATH_MAX] by
  char *foo, and using dynamic memory allocation, i.e. e.g. a loop that tries
  geometrically growing sizes.

Has anyone ever explored how many ways you can DoS the Hurd by exploiting this
no-limits-anywhere practice?

Peter.