John Oram wrote: > > Day: > > I'll let Bob George pound on ya about *NIX. But your comment below about > DOS are so patently off track you need to use your computer for > researching the "facts" you claim are correct before you send them out > to the list. > > You are out on the end of undocumented DOS limb with your chain saw > cutting the limb off :-) > > Please stop the BULLs**t about DOS not having any problems with > undocumented features. I have sent you to this web site multiple times > in the past <http://www.undoc.com/> The book is only 854 pages long with > info on the undocumented features of the various verions of DOS. I have no way of evaluating the reality vs the perception. It is obvious to me however, that those interested in coding sabotage software will focus on the OS which they think will have the most undocumented and obscure subroutines to work with. As Ralf Brown's INTERVUE database shows, the set of interrupts is considerable. but when you add to that the millions of lines of code used in windoz, or even the small set for nix, the permutations become nearly infinite.
Your cite of of the Adaptec is timely. I recognize the part number, and believe every nix distro will have drivers for it. If you have a scsi and an ide... you can boot from the ide, but if you dont add the scsi driver, I dont see any way that a dos boot can do anything to the scsi. Which is why I have the scsi driver set on optional load on the drdos config.sys ? device=tekram.sys If anyone can come up with dos virus that can install the scsi driver, I'll get off the net. Inasmuch as dos is well known as being 'dead', the sabotage attempt is unlikely. Whatever could be done in dos wont, and whatever could be attempted is more easily recognized by the dos virus scanners, who have far less code to look thru. Fundamentally, viruses depend on complexity to hide in. Anyway, when I boot nix off the scsi, as I do for netscape... Suse dont even 'see' the dos drive, so again, a nix virus would have to mount the vfat before it could do anything to it. That is another layer in the firewall. The remoteness of a coder successfully crafting a nix virus, and then adding the ability to mount a dos drive, seems beyond the realm of credibility. I can certainly see them considering a windoz/nix dual boot, and perhaps being successful at infecting it. But again, since the dos user base is so tiny, nobody would bother with it. afterall, everyone uses better operating systems. I dont ever run anything beside the file transfer tools which even knows there is another drive with another os. To unsubscribe from SURVPC send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe SURVPC in the body of the message. Also, trim this footer from any quoted replies. More info can be found at; http://www.softcon.com/archives/SURVPC.html