From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1755485Ab1BIVrI (ORCPT ); Wed, 9 Feb 2011 16:47:08 -0500 Received: from mail.lang.hm ([64.81.33.126]:37386 "EHLO bifrost.lang.hm" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750822Ab1BIVrG (ORCPT ); Wed, 9 Feb 2011 16:47:06 -0500 Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2011 13:47:01 -0800 (PST) From: david@lang.hm X-X-Sender: dlang@asgard.lang.hm To: Gergely Nagy cc: "Serge E. Hallyn" , James Morris , Linux Kernel Mailing List Subject: Re: CAP_SYSLOG, 2.6.38 and user space In-Reply-To: <1297287604.13055.65.camel@luthien.mhp> Message-ID: References: <1296733177.14846.26.camel@moria> <20110203153252.GA24153@mail.hallyn.com> <20110204160513.GB17396@mail.hallyn.com> <1296837186.24742.15.camel@moria> <20110204171502.GA24226@mail.hallyn.com> <20110206011831.GB15805@mail.hallyn.com> <20110209212329.GA24777@mail.hallyn.com> <1297286934.13055.57.camel@luthien.mhp> <1297287604.13055.65.camel@luthien.mhp> User-Agent: Alpine 2.00 (DEB 1167 2008-08-23) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Wed, 9 Feb 2011, Gergely Nagy wrote: > On Wed, 2011-02-09 at 13:34 -0800, david@lang.hm wrote: >> On Wed, 9 Feb 2011, Gergely Nagy wrote: >> >>> On Wed, 2011-02-09 at 21:23 +0000, Serge E. Hallyn wrote: >>>> So if that's how we're leaning, then the following patch is much more >>>> concise. I'll send this to Linus and any appropriate -stable tomorrow >>>> if noone objects. >>>> >>>> From 5166e114d6a7c508addbadd763322089eb0b02f5 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 >>>> From: Serge Hallyn >>>> Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2011 09:26:15 -0600 >>>> Subject: [PATCH 1/1] cap_syslog: don't refuse cap_sys_admin for now (v2) >>>> >>>> It'd be nice to do that later, but it's not strictly necessary, >>>> and it'll be hard to do without breaking somebody's userspace. >>>> >>>> Signed-off-by: Serge Hallyn >>>> --- >>>> kernel/printk.c | 14 ++++---------- >>>> 1 files changed, 4 insertions(+), 10 deletions(-) >>> >>> Personally, I'd prefer the sysctl idea in the long run, because >>> userspace can easily and automatically adapt to the running kernel then. >>> Ie, this patch is fine for 2.6.38, but later on, a sysctl could be >>> introduced, that when set (but defaulting to unset, as to not break >>> userspace), would make CAP_SYS_ADMIN return -EPERM. That way, syslogds >>> could look at the setting, and act accordingly. This would mean that old >>> userspace wouldn't break, and upgraded userspace could work on both old >>> and new kernels, depending on the setting. Distros or admins could then >>> enable the sysctl once they made sure that all neccessary applications >>> have been upgraded. >> >> what is your justification for ever having CAP_SYS_ADMIN return -EPERM? >> what's the value in blocking this. > > Nothing. Come to think of it, the main use of the sysctl would be to > detect CAP_SYSLOG support, so that applications can drop CAP_SYS_ADMIN > and use CAP_SYSLOG only (which, imo, is a good idea - the less > capabilities, the better, and CAP_SYS_ADMIN is quite broad when one only > wants CAP_SYSLOG). > > If there's a better way to allow userspace to easily detect CAP_SYSLOG, > I'm all for that. if userspace wants to detect this, what is wrong with them checking for a kernel >= 2.6.38? realistically, if the upstream applications (which need to work with many different versions) just support having CAP_SYS_ADMIN, it would be a very minor distro patch to change this to CAP_SYSLOG for a distro release where the distro _knows_ that they don't have to support an older kernel. David Lang