Re: concept of a permissive domain

[Karl MacMillan <kmacmillan@mentalrootkit.com>]

On Fri, 2007-10-12 at 16:43 -0400, Chad Sellers wrote:
> On 10/12/07 3:05 PM, "Karl MacMillan" <kmacmillan@mentalrootkit.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, 2007-10-12 at 14:40 -0400, Chad Sellers wrote:

[...[

> > 
> > Calling it a permissive domain uses the same concept as global
> > permissive - so I think that is natural. It does not, to me, mean that
> > it should be enabled in the same way as global permissive - that's just
> > an implementation detail. I think it is much better to put it in the
> > policy as that allows some sort of sane delivery mechanism.
> > 
> Calling it one thing and implementing it differently is fine as long as the
> implementation doesn't leak out to the user. And it will here. We're not
> exactly good at making leak-proof abstractions to begin with, but this is a
> case where the user will see a new statement in policy.
> 
> Think of this from the perspective of the user. We have to tell them that
> system-wide permissive is not part of policy, but is instead in a config
> file, done using setenforce, or done using selinuxfs, but per-domain
> permissive is not done by any of those methods, but instead is done in
> policy via a new language construct. This is confusing.
> 
> Chad

See, now you are going to make me argue for putting permissive in the
policy, which I think that it should be. The fact that we have
permissive in a separate config file, have to write a little parser in
libselinux, patch apps to set permissive on boot is just dumb.

That doesn't mean when shouldn't allow small changes to the in-kernel
policy - like switching permissive on or off - but I still think it
makes no sense to have one big configuration file with lots of tiny
supporting config files. Just put it all in one place and be done with
it.

Karl


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