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This article was posted to the Usenet group alt.hackers in 1995; any technical information is probably outdated.

Re: also WANTED: VMS info


Article: 7738 of alt.hackers
From: tomb@panix.com (Tom Benjamin)
Newsgroups: alt.hackers
Subject: Re: also WANTED: VMS info
Date: 29 Apr 1995 11:58:23 -0400
Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and Unix, NYC
Lines: 66
Approved: By fred.
Message-ID: 3ntnmv$nsi@panix3.panix.com
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix3.panix.com
Status: RO

In <3n863u$nop@trance.helix.net> chowes@trance.helix.net (Charles
Howes) writes:

>In article <UNI.EDU-1404951107260001@amana.math-cs.uni.edu>,
>UNI.EDU <UNI.EDU> wrote:
>>
>>In another fun twist of fate, I find my campus sysop capturing my
>>sessions to disk.  Not only does he have a copy of EVERY keystroke
	First off, try and find out what he is using to do this.
In my experiance, most sysadmins who do this sort of thing are
weenies.  Most people jerk enough to invade someones privacy to
this extent is probably not a very competant sysadmin, therefore
it is entirly possable he is not a good programmer, etc...
Check to see if he is using on of the 'standard' packages for
keystroke monetering, such as photo, supervisor, watch, etc...
Most of these are available via anonamous ftp, with source...

>>quota goes down in proportion to the amount of keystrokes and
text viewed
>>my previous login.  Any ideas how to show this file in the directory,
	In the versions of VMS I have worked with (only on VAX)
it is not possable to have hidden files.  However, a file that affects
your quota is not neccisarily in your directory!

>If only it were a unix system, you could:
On a VMS system you still can:

>  1) remove the file
	If you can find it.
>  2) replace it with a file you can read
	Change the protection so that you can read it.
>  3) replace it with a symlink to /dev/null
	Make a logical pointing to null:

>Is there a VMS tool for showing a list of all open files?
	Yes, name doesn't come to mind, check standard ftp sites.
But, this is probably not the esiest way to handle the problem.

>Also, doesn't VMS have the principle "If a file affects your
quota, you
>have control over it"?
	If it is affecting your quota, then you are the files owner.  This
means that even it is set so that you can not touch it, you can
change the protection so that you can.	The owner can always change
the protection, barring various ACL tricks, most of which are undocumented
and require some systems programming knowlege.

	My advice is to play around with spawning off subprocess, etc..
There must be a process controlling the monetering, look for it.
If it is set up so that you own the log file, perhaps you also own
the monitoring process, a healthy dose of $delprc $suspend or $forcex
might be in order.  I personally recommend $forcex, if you need a util
for forcex contact me, I don't know of any other than the ones I have written.
try examining your process carefully, looking for things like open file
quota limit, etc...  Watching a process from another terminal while
it does thing can be very enlightening.
	Also, If monetering is started every time you log in, check
your login.com, sys$startup:sylogin.com, etc...  sys$startup is always
a good place to start.
	In your process table, look for suspicious logicals and symbols.
	I think that is enough ranting for now, if you want more useless
advice I am available any time! :-D.  Please remember though, that this
is all stuff off the top of my head.  If I was in you position I would
probably take time to write a couple of programs to help me track down
the method of the monetering before attempting to combat it.
P.S.
	Consider posting a question in a vmsnet newsgroup, or alt.os.vms..
Good luck!
			---Tom Benjamin



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