Safari: be careful!

[cocoamix]

http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/03/01/09/2139223.shtml?tid=107

Welcome to the wonderful world of BETA software! Back to Chimera for me, until this is fixed.

[voidmain]

WTF, does the browser run as "root" on a Mac? How else would it be capable of removing /tmp? And a normal user can't even overwrite their home directory because the parent directory doesn't allow it.

[cocoamix]

I dunno, I seriously hope Apple is not taking a chapter from Microsoft's manual and making the browser a super app that can do anything to your system. A browser should be a fucking BROWSER, nothing more. That's what Chimera is and that's what I'm going back to.

[xyle_one]

shitty. i guess i will go back to using Chimera. at least unitl this is resolved.

[dot.this]

Naturally, the first thing I did when I read that was to print the page, because I was, and still am, using Safari.

It printed just fine. I like Safari a lot. It's the little things, like how it gives you a dialog box when you bookmark a link.

Does it work with root login? Well, I always log in as root. It's my machine, after all. I like to have control. I also have a firewall about twenty feet thick.

I think this is the browser I've been looking for. OmniWeb is close, but Safari is better.

[voidmain]

Not logging in as root doesn't protect you from outside crackers as much as it protects you from yourself, and exactly this sort of problem (an app fucks up and starts wiping out key directories). If you don't log in as root this can never happen.

[choasforages]

never use root unless you have a clear mind, i deleted libc6 once....

[Calum]

quote:Originally posted by dot.this:
Naturally, the first thing I did when I read that was to print the page, because I was, and still am, using Safari.

It printed just fine. I like Safari a lot. It's the little things, like how it gives you a dialog box when you bookmark a link.

Does it work with root login? Well, I always log in as root. It's my machine, after all. I like to have control. I also have a firewall about twenty feet thick.

I think this is the browser I've been looking for. OmniWeb is close, but Safari is better.

there are reasons, but like you say, it's your computer. i tend to agree with the people who say they prefer to use safe and secure software myself.

[Kintaro]

Meh, weird, why would it run as root.

[Calum]

maybe it's shit...

[dot.this]

quote:Not logging in as root doesn't protect you from outside crackers as much as it protects you from yourself

I agree. I don't claim that everybody should use their Mac the way I do. I have a second hard drive with a backup system, in case I screw up.

I use TinkerTool to show all the hidden files, so I can navigate paths like /private/var/root and /usr/local/bin in the finder. I like using column views for navigation.

I use Diablotin to exclude a number of system items I don't use, like Apache and Network Time. I've also removed about twenty kernel extensions, mostly for video cards I don't have. I have the Developer Tools installed, and I'm even using X11.app and GIMP 1.2.3.

It's stable as hell, of course, and uses 2/3 of the RAM a regular install of OS X.2.3 would use.

If anyone's curious, I can make a list of all the kernel extensions and other stuff I removed. I can tell you, the only way to set it all up is to be logged in as root from the very start. As soon as I could open the NetInfo Manager, I was setting up a root login. Right now, I could log in under my admin name, but nothing is set up, because I've never used it.

p.s. I'm still using the Safari Beta.

[ January 10, 2003: Message edited by: dot.this ]

[Pantso]

Wow! Serious problems indeed! That's a shame cos I really liked it. Well, it's back to Chimera until they deliver a stable release!

[cocoamix]

New version posted earlier today.
Some heads probably rolled for this one.

[rtgwbmsr]

Hope the new version fixed the problem...

It launches way faster now.

[voidmain]

Here's something I didn't realize. Safari is a sister to KDE Konqueror. It uses KDE's KHTML:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6565