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

David Madore
2006-09-06T22:27:38Z

On Wed, Sep 06, 2006 at 01:25:31PM -0500, Serge E. Hallyn wrote:
> The fact that you're changing the inheritance rules is a bit scary, so
> I'm going to (and I hope others will) take some time to look it over.

Thanks! I'd appreciate it. Don't hesitate to ask me if some
decisions I made are unclear.

I was about to write to you, in fact, since I wrote a version of my
patch which merges with the one you made (an old version, though, I
suppose: I took it from <URL: http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/8/15/294 >,
but I can try merging with more recent versions). The point being to
show that my patch is not incompatible with yours: they are quite
complementary. (The merged patch can be found in <URL:
ftp://quatramaran.ens.fr/pub/madore/newcaps/pre-alpha/ >.)

> In the meantime, so long as you're adding some new capabilities, how
> about also splitting up a few like CAP_SYS_ADMIN? Have you looked into
> it and decided none are really separable, i.e. any subset leads to the
> ability to get any other subset?

I agree that splitting CAP_SYS_ADMIN might be worth while, but it
really looks like opening a worm can, so I didn't feel up to the
challenge there. It might be a good idea to reserve some bits for
that possibility, however - I'm not sure how best to proceed.

> I'd recommend you split this patch into at least 3:
> 1. move to 64-bit caps
> 2. introduce your new caps
> (perhaps even one new cap per patch)
> 3. introduce the new inheritance rules

Yes, that sounds like a good idea. I'll do that.

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