Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2008 18:46:58 +1000 (EST)
From: James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>
To: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
cc: akpm@linux-foundation.org, harvey.harrison@gmail.com,
       linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] CRED: Document the credential API's (ab)use of const
 pointers
In-Reply-To: <20080821135224.17166.32291.stgit@warthog.procyon.org.uk>
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References: <20080821135224.17166.32291.stgit@warthog.procyon.org.uk>
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On Thu, 21 Aug 2008, David Howells wrote:

> Document the credential API's (ab)use of const pointers.  Various pointers to
> credentials, such as those in the task_struct, are declared const.  The purpose
> of this is to compile-time discouragement of altering credentials through those
> pointers.  Once a set of credentials has been made public through one of these
> pointers, it may not be modified, except under special circumstances:
> 
>   (1) Its reference count may incremented and decremented.
> 
>   (2) The keyrings to which it points may be modified, but not replaced.
> 
> The only safe way to modify anything else is to create a replacement and commit
> using the functions described in Documentation/credentials.txt.
> 
> Signed-off-by: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>

Applied to
git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/jmorris/security-testing-2.6#next-creds


-- 
James Morris
<jmorris@namei.org>
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