Re: patch to make Linux capabilities into something useful (v 0.3.1)

David Madore
2006-09-07T17:34:51Z

On Thu, Sep 07, 2006 at 01:01:48AM +0000, Casey Schaufler wrote:
> --- David Madore <david.madore@ens.fr> wrote:
> > doesn't it make sense to implement them in the same
> > framework?
>
> I'm certainly not convinced that you'd
> want that. Think of all the programs that
> would have to be marked with CAP_FORK.

They wouldn't have to be marked: capabilities are inherited by
default, with my patch (as is the Unix tradition: euid=0 or {r,s}uid=0
are preserved upon execve()), normal processes have CAP_FORK and just
pass it on if you don't do something special to remove it.

> > Rather
> > than trying to reproduce the same rules in a
> > different part of the
> > kernel, causing code reduplication which would
> > eventually, inevitably,
> > fall out of sync... I think it's easier for
> > everyone if under- and
> > over-privileges are treated in a uniform fashion.
>
> This again assumes that you want to require
> that in general processes run with some
> capabilities.

Yes. In general, processes have all "regular" capabilities, and they
are inherited normally.

--
David A. Madore
(david.madore@ens.fr,
http://www.madore.org/~david/ )