Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261726AbVA3Qso (ORCPT ); Sun, 30 Jan 2005 11:48:44 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261730AbVA3Qso (ORCPT ); Sun, 30 Jan 2005 11:48:44 -0500 Received: from clock-tower.bc.nu ([81.2.110.250]:49359 "EHLO lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261726AbVA3Qpn (ORCPT ); Sun, 30 Jan 2005 11:45:43 -0500 Subject: Re: thoughts on kernel security issues From: Alan Cox To: Olaf Hering Cc: Linus Torvalds , Jesse Pollard , linux-os , John Richard Moser , dtor_core@ameritech.net, Bill Davidsen , Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu, Arjan van de Ven , Ingo Molnar , Christoph Hellwig , Dave Jones , Andrew Morton , marcelo.tosatti@cyclades.com, Greg KH , chrisw@osdl.org, Linux Kernel Mailing List In-Reply-To: <20050126191501.GA26920@suse.de> References: <1106157152.6310.171.camel@laptopd505.fenrus.org> <41F6A45D.1000804@comcast.net> <05012609151500.16556@tabby> <20050126191501.GA26920@suse.de> Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <1106856939.14787.53.camel@localhost.localdomain> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Ximian Evolution 1.4.6 (1.4.6-2) Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2005 15:39:47 +0000 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1197 Lines: 26 On Mer, 2005-01-26 at 19:15, Olaf Hering wrote: > And, did that nice interface help at all? No, it did not. > Noone made seqfile mandatory in 2.6. > Now we have a few nice big patches to carry around because every driver > author had its own proc implementation. Well done... seqfile has helped immensely from what I can see. And gradually it takes over the kernel because each time someone has a broken proc driver it is easier to rewrite it in seq_file than fix it any other way. All good API's work that way, and they really do work. You only have to look at things like the statistics for Gnome application string caused security errors versus those for generic C apps to see the huge effect stuff like g_string classes have had on reliability. We need *more* API's like this - we are lacking some nice helpers for simple block/char devices and also lacking a "call under lock" construct which avoids forgetting to drop locks for example. Alan - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/