Message-ID: <1422902826.30131.38.camel@dhcp-9-2-203-236.watson.ibm.com>
Subject: Re: [capabilities] Allow normal inheritance for a configurable set
 of capabilities
From: Mimi Zohar <zohar@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
To: Serge Hallyn <serge.hallyn@ubuntu.com>
Cc: Casey Schaufler <casey@schaufler-ca.com>, Christoph Lameter <cl@linux.com>,
        Serge Hallyn <serge.hallyn@canonical.com>,
        Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net>,
        Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>, Aaron Jones <aaronmdjones@gmail.com>,
        "Ted Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>, linux-security-module@vger.kernel.org,
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, akpm@linuxfoundation.org
Date: Mon, 02 Feb 2015 13:47:06 -0500
In-Reply-To: <20150202180806.GE24351@ubuntumail>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.11.1502021018500.5029@gentwo.org>
	 <54CFB9B8.8020701@schaufler-ca.com> <20150202180806.GE24351@ubuntumail>
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On Mon, 2015-02-02 at 18:08 +0000, Serge Hallyn wrote: 
> 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. 

We're working on resolving the CPIO issue.  tar currently supports
xattrs.  At this point, how many non-xattr filesystems are there really?

Mimi

>  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. 
> --
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> 


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