[Bug 14551] New: hexedit-applet desperately needs a "readonly"-option

[bugzilla at busybox.net]

https://bugs.busybox.net/show_bug.cgi?id=14551

            Bug ID: 14551
           Summary: hexedit-applet desperately needs a "readonly"-option
           Product: Busybox
           Version: 1.33.x
          Hardware: All
                OS: Linux
            Status: NEW
          Severity: enhancement
          Priority: P5
         Component: Other
          Assignee: unassigned at busybox.net
          Reporter: gb_about_gnu at gmx.net
                CC: busybox-cvs at busybox.net
  Target Milestone: ---

The "hexedit" BB applet is extremely useful for quickly examining boot sectors,
partition tables and similar on-disk structures.

However, the current applet does not have a "readonly" option, and immediately
writes any keyboard input to the disk.

This makes the usage of this applet extremely dangerous in practice:
Accidentally pressing any key which corresponds to a hexadecimal character
immediately damages the boot sector, superblock of a filesystem etc.

I therefore strongly recommend either adding a "-r" option to the applet for
opening the target in read-only mode, or adding a second applet (like
"hexbrowse") which shares the same code except for the mode argument to open().

Another option would be to cache the input in a buffer and only write it back
after issuing a special local subcommand, such as pressing the F2 key in the
original hexedit application.

-- 
You are receiving this mail because:
You are on the CC list for the bug.