Re: [capabilities] Allow normal inheritance for a configurable set of capabilities

Serge Hallyn
2015-02-02T18:08:17Z

Quoting Casey Schaufler (casey@schaufler-ca.com):
> I'm game to participate in such an effort. The POSIX scheme
> is workable, but given that it's 20 years old and hasn't
> developed real traction it's hard to call it successful.

Over the years we've several times discussed possible reasons for this
and how to help. I personally think it's two things: 1. lack of
toolchain and fs support. The fact that we cannot to this day enable
ping using capabilities by default because of cpio, tar and non-xattr
filesystems is disheartening. 2. It's hard for users and applications
to know what caps they need. yes the API is a bear to use, but we can
hide that behind fancier libraries. But using capabilities requires too
much in-depth knowledge of precisely what caps you might need for
whatever operations library may now do when you asked for something.