From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Ben Hutchings Subject: Re: [PATCH] ethtool: allow non-netadmin to query settings Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2010 22:24:38 +0100 Message-ID: <1282598678.2267.85.camel@achroite.uk.solarflarecom.com> References: <20100823132418.7721b072@nehalam> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: David Miller , Jeff Garzik , netdev@vger.kernel.org To: Stephen Hemminger Return-path: Received: from mail.solarflare.com ([216.237.3.220]:46221 "EHLO exchange.solarflare.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1754511Ab0HWVYu (ORCPT ); Mon, 23 Aug 2010 17:24:50 -0400 In-Reply-To: <20100823132418.7721b072@nehalam> Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Mon, 2010-08-23 at 13:24 -0700, Stephen Hemminger wrote: > The SNMP daemon uses ethtool to determine the speed of > network interfaces. This fails on Debian (and probably elsewhere) > because for security SNMP daemon runs as non-root user (snmp). > > Note: A similar patch was rejected previously because of a concern about > the possibility that on some hardware querying the ethtool settings > requires access to the PHY and could slow the machine down. But the > security risk of requiring SNMP daemon (and related services) > to run as root far out weighs the risk of denial-of-service. [...] Speed and duplex are now exposed through world-readable attributes in sysfs. Currently this is implemented by calling the ethtool get_settings() operations but that could be improved on by adding speed and duplex fields to struct net_device or by allowing drivers to implement a cheaper operation that provides just this information. Ben. -- Ben Hutchings, Senior Software Engineer, Solarflare Communications Not speaking for my employer; that's the marketing department's job. They asked us to note that Solarflare product names are trademarked.