Re: [PATCH v5] init: Disable defaults if init= fails

Frank Rowand
2014-10-15T05:46:18Z

On 10/14/2014 2:21 PM, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 2:00 PM, Andrew Morton
> <akpm@linux-foundation.org> wrote:
>> On Wed, 1 Oct 2014 11:13:14 -0700 Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, Oct 1, 2014 at 11:05 AM, <josh@joshtriplett.org> wrote:
>>>> On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 09:53:56PM -0700, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
>>>>> I significantly prefer default N. Scripts that play with init= really
>>>>> don't want the fallback, and I can imagine contexts in which it could
>>>>> be a security problem.
>>>>
>>>> While I certainly would prefer the non-fallback behavior for init as
>>>> well, standard kernel practice has typically been to use "default y" for
>>>> previously built-in features that become configurable. And I'd
>>>> certainly prefer a compile-time configuration option like this (even
>>>> with default y) over a "strictinit" kernel command-line option.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Fair enough.
>>>
>>> So: "default y" for a release or two, then switch the default? Having
>>> default y will annoy virtme, though it's not the end of the world.
>>> Virtme is intended to work with more-or-less-normal kernels.
>>>
>>
>> Adding another Kconfig option is tiresome. What was wrong with strictinit=?
>
> The consensus seems to be that adding a non-default option to get

^^^^^^^^^ I do not think you know what the word consensus means. :-)

I did not agree.

I do agree with Andrew (but with no opinion on whether "strictinit=SOMETHING"
or just "strictinit".

> sensible behavior would be unfortunate. Also, I don't like
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
behavior that is useful in some or many contexts

> strictinit=, since backwards-compatible setups will have to do
> init=foo strictinit=foo. My original proposal was init=foo
> strictinit.
>
> TBH, my preference would be to make strict mode unconditional.
> http://xkcd.com/1172/
>
> --Andy
>