Re: [PATCH] IPC_SET_PERM cleanup

[Linda Knippers <linda.knippers@hp.com>]

Steve Grubb wrote:
> On Wednesday 10 May 2006 12:29, Klaus Weidner wrote:
> 
>>>This is at the wrong level. There may be people that are writing programs
>>>that want any ouid. I want to stop the proliferation of field names and
>>>follow a convention. Forget whether or not you think people will ever
>>>want the information. We need a convention and then to follow it.
>>
>>Yes - but "new ouid" is also a different field name from "ouid", and
>>unnecessarily hard to parse,
> 
> 
> I am writing the parser. No one else should have to worry about it. 

That assumes everyone uses your parser.  We have existing code we're
supporting that doesn't use your parser and we're not planning to
re-write our code.  I don't know how many other people are in the
same position.  I also think its helpful if the output of ausearch
is easily grepable.

> Besides, 
> we already do this *everywhere* except in this patch. I am just trying to 
> keep the whole thing consistent. If you see anywhere that has new_something 
> or old_something, please let me know. 
> 
> In all the places I looked, the value given is considered the new value. The 
> old value is given as old=

I think what these examples show is that there is no consistency.

> Some examples:
> "audit_rate_limit=%d old=%d by auid=%u"
> "audit_backlog_limit=%d old=%d by auid=%u"

What does "by" signify as a modifier?

> But then there is this:
> audit_log_format(ab, "login pid=%d uid=%u " "old auid=%u new auid=%u",
> 
> Arguably, that could be re-written as:
> audit_log_format(ab, "login pid=%d uid=%u " "auid=%u old auid=%u"

If the middle example used an underscore instead of a space, that would
make lots of people happier.
> 
>>especially since there's currently no well defined concept of name modifiers
>>like "new"
> 
> 
> Its used in many places, but you are more likely to run across old. The 
> function in the specs that was intended to do this was:
> 
> const char *auparse_get_field_name_aux(auparse_state_t *au) - return  
> supplemental information about the field's name.

If I used the APIs then I have to look at the aux information for a
bunch of records I don't want because I can't directly search for the
ones I do?

> 
> -Steve