[sugar] [OLPC Security] P_READ_LOGS

[Eben Eliason]

On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 10:07 AM, Bastien <bastienguerry at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Mikus Grinbergs <mikus at bga.com> writes:
>
>>> The easiest way to present logs, especially failure logs, is to make them
>>> available through the standard Journal/Datastore interface.  For example,
>>> we have some agreement that when an Activity fails to launch, the failure
>>> should appear as such in the Journal time-view, connected to an object
>>> representing the log file for that failure.  This log object has a "text"
>>> type, and so can naturally be opened by any Activity that accepts this
>>> type.  No additional permissions are required.  The user is responsible
>>> for determining when to provide both sensitive data and P_NETWORK to the
>>> same Activity.
>>
>> I find the Journal interface to be cumbersome.  I also do not
>> believe the Journal ought to be cluttered up with "footprints"
>> a kid would probably not be able to do anything about.   -1.

Agreed, but...

> I also think failure logs don't naturally fit into the current Journal.
> They are a non-desirable side-effect of an activity, not an activity per
> se.
>
> But it could fit okay into the next versions of the Journal, where some
> kind of pre-filtering would let the user see only the most important
> entries for him.  Failure logs would then be low-level entries, along
> with other logs (particularily mail logs, when we'll have a native mail
> client on the XO.)

...I do think they could belong in the Journal specified in the latest
designs.  The new Journal is divided into "actions" and "objects"
which adjust the perspective on the available "stuff".  For this
particular case, an action (The action view is most like the current )
would be logged to say "Activity X failed to launch.", and containing
a reference to the log file, which would only appear as a separate
entry within the Objects view.

This ability to encapsulate several object references into individual,
higher level action entries should make the Journal much friendlier,
and provide a way to get to details like log files and other such info
without cluttering up the view.

- Eben