Re: [PATCH] Introduce BSD-style user credential [3/3]

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com>]

On Sat, 31 Aug 2002, Trond Myklebust wrote:
> 
>   Add the COW structure 'vfs_cred'
> 
>   Make VFS changes to replace all instances of
>   current->fsuid/fsgid/ngroups/groups with a single 'vfs_cred' that
>   never can be changed by CLONE_CRED after we call down into the VFS.

Yup, I think I like that plan.

One thing that may be interesting (I certainly think it migth be), would
be to add a "struct user_struct *" pointer to the vfs_cred as well. This
is because I'd just _love_ to have that "user_struct" fed down to the VFS
layer, since I think that is where we may some day want to put things like
user-supplied cryptographic keys etc.

The advantage of "struct user_struct" (as opposed to just a uid_t) is that 
it can have information that lives for the whole duration of a login, and 
it's really the only kind of data structure in the kernel that can track 
that kind of information. 

>      > (I would suggest calling the FS credentials "struct vfs_cred",
>      > while the regular user credentials might just be "struct cred".
>      > Other suggestions?)
> 
> I'm fine about 'vfs_cred', but how about 'struct task_cred' instead
> for the second?

Sounds fine to me.

		Linus