Re: [PATCH] Version 3 (2.6.23-rc8) Smack: Simplified Mandatory Access Control Kernel

Eric W. Biederman
2007-10-08T21:03:20Z

Casey Schaufler <casey@schaufler-ca.com> writes:

> --- "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@xmission.com> wrote:
>
>
>> My very practical question: How do I run selinux in one container,
>> and SMACK in another?
>
> How would you run PREEMPT_RT in one container, and PREEMPT_DESKTOP
> in another?

Well the style of kernel preemption is generally an implementation
detail that is not visible to user space.

> How would you run SMP in one and UP in the other?
Bind all of the UP processes to a single cpu.

> One aspect that SELinux and Smack share is that they only really
> provide security if all processes involved are under their control,
> just like the preemption behavior.

Right. But in a container that look like a full system arguably this
is doable. There are a few additional details that would be needed
to ensure containers are isolated from each other that would be
needed to ensure this is effective but those are fairly minor.

> This is not necessarily true of all possible LSMs. In that case it may
> be practicle to have different behavior for different containers.

When we get to the point where this is a real concern I believe the
isolation will be sufficient that this it is a valid question to
ask.

If there is nothing visible to user space I don't care. But security
modules are fundamentally about changing when -EPERM happens so are
very visible to user space.

Eric