Re: [ANN] SE-PostgreSQL 8.2.3-1.0 alpha release

[KaiGai Kohei <kaigai@kaigai.gr.jp>]

Russell Coker wrote:
> On Wednesday 07 March 2007 06:17, Stephen Smalley <sds@tycho.nsa.gov> wrote:
>>> We have to store a security context of tuple in anywhere, so modifying
>>> the file format was not avoidable. The storage manager of PostgreSQL
>>> cannot handle different file formats, so SE-PostgreSQL cannot run over
>>> the unlabeled databased generated by native PostgreSQL.
>>>
>>> It might be possible, but I expect more hooks to the PostgreSQL is
>>> necessary. It will prevent to follow the version-up of native one.
>> Do they provide any kind of attribute / metadata support at that
>> granularity?  Along the lines of filesystem xattrs?
>>
>> Could you store the labels in a separate table?  Along the lines of the
>> old persistent label mapping in SELinux (issues for consistency and
>> performance, of course).
> 
> The labelling for tables and columns could be stored in a different table as 
> they don't change much.
> 
> The labelling of rows could be stored in an extra column in the table.
> 
> Then if the non-SE version of PostgreSQL had some code to ignore the SE Linux 
> column then we would have fairly good compatibility.
> 
> Kohei-san, is this a viable idea?

Russell,

Actually, I tried to use an extra (hidden) column to store a security context,
but gave up this approach.
# The following branch is the one just before I gave up:
#   http://sepgsql.googlecode.com/svn/branches/sepgsql_070210/

It did not resolve file format issue, because we have to add an extra column
into system catalog to associate a security context with table, column and so on.

(*) system catalog is a table to store the meta-information
     like the definition of the table.

The definition of system catalogs are hard-coded in the header files, so adding
an extra column could not avoid to break the database file format compatibility....

Thanks,
-- 
KaiGai Kohei <kaigai@kaigai.gr.jp>

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