Status of capabilities?

[Michael Kerrisk <m.kerrisk@gmx.net>]

Gidday,

What are the current status and future of capabilites?  There seems to be no
up-to-date information on this anywhere.

It seems capabilities have been partly implemented since 2.2.  That is to
say:

1. The kernel checks (effective) capabilities when performing various
operations.

2. System calls are provided to raise and lower capabilties

What's still missing in 2.4, as far as I can see after reading the sources,
is the ability to set capabilities on executable files so that a process
gains those privileges when executing the file.  I recall seeing some information
somewhere saying this wasn't possible / wasn't going to happen for ext2.  Is
it on the drawing board for any file system?  

Thanks

Michael

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