[Bug 216667] New: Self-contradictory description of inheritable capability set

[bugzilla-daemon@kernel.org]

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=216667

            Bug ID: 216667
           Summary: Self-contradictory description of inheritable
                    capability set
           Product: Documentation
           Version: unspecified
          Hardware: All
                OS: Linux
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P1
         Component: man-pages
          Assignee: documentation_man-pages@kernel-bugs.osdl.org
          Reporter: robryk@gmail.com
        Regression: No

man capabilities says about the inheritable capset of a process:

> This is a set of capabilities preserved across an execve(2).  Inheritable
> capabilities remain inheritable when executing any program, (...)

I understand this to mean that any capability in the inheritable set will stay
inheritable across an execve (i.e. the inheritable set will not shrink across
execve).

The same manpage says in the next paragraph:

> Because inheritable capabilities are not generally preserved across execve(2)
> when running as a non-root user (...)

This seems to say the exact opposite of how I read the previous paragraph.

I am probably misunderstanding something basic here, but I am unlikely to be
the only person who does so, so I think it bears making this part clearer.

(When I try to look at the rest of the manpage to get more clarity, I fail:
 - the section that describes capability transformations across execve() seems
to say that inheritable capset stays constant,
 - the description of ambient capabilities implies that inheritable
capabilities differ from ambient insofar ambient ones are more "durable" across
execve().)

-- 
You may reply to this email to add a comment.

You are receiving this mail because:
You are watching the assignee of the bug.