A visual guide to ACL Access-Control Lists

gabriele97@lemmy.g97.top to Linux@lemmy.ml – 599 points –
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Windows NT ACLs come from VMS.

The Unix world has traditionally not liked ACLs because Multics had them, and Unix was an ultra-minimalist response to Multics.

Yep, you're right. I was thinking of an ACL evolution/chain of influence of VMS -> AIX -> NT, but it seems VMS -> NT and VMS -> AIX as two separate histories is much more accurate. Thanks for the correction -- I've updated my comment accordingly.

My AIX experience is very limited. What was the VMS connection?

VMS implemented ACLs in the early 80s. It's design influenced the design of ACLs in both AIX and Windows NT.

Yeah, I'm familiar with VMS, and Cutler bringing a lot of the internal design to W/NT. (I'm told in particular a lot of the data structures for system calls in NT look like VMS.) My AIX experience has consisted entirely of "This is weird. This isn't normal for Unix." Ha ha. (I had a 1st gen RS/6000 at home briefly in the late 90s.)

And I do have a "grey wall" in my library:

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