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Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2010 06:18:50 +0100
Message-ID: <cfd18e0f1003132118y21bd71band2d07ae85c8d4c9@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Define CAP_SYSLOG
From: Michael Kerrisk <mtk.manpages@googlemail.com>
To: "Serge E. Hallyn" <serue@us.ibm.com>
Cc: James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>, lkml <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
       SELinux <selinux@tycho.nsa.gov>, linux-security-module@vger.kernel.org,
       Stephen Smalley <sds@epoch.ncsc.mil>,
       Kees Cook <kees.cook@canonical.com>, Andrew Morgan <morgan@kernel.org>,
       "Christopher J. PeBenito" <cpebenito@tresys.com>,
       Eric Paris <eparis@parisplace.org>
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> There is one downside to this patch:  If some site or distro currently
> has syslogd/whatever running as a non-root user with cap_sys_admin+pe,
> then it will need to be changed to run with cap_syslog+pe.  I don't
> know if there are such sites, or if that concern means we should take
> a different approach to introducing this change, or simply refuse this
> change.

*If* this is a problem, would the way to address it not be to permit
syslog if the caller has *either* CAP_SYS_ADMIN or CAP_SYSLOG? (The
only weakness I see in this idea is that it fails to lighten the
hugely overlaoded CAP_SYS_ADMIN.)

Cheers,

Michael

-- 
Michael Kerrisk
Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
Author of "The Linux Programming Interface" http://blog.man7.org/