linux-kernel - Re: [capabilities] Allow normal inheritance for a configurable set of capabilities

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Message-ID: <20150203160401.GA3653@mail.hallyn.com>
Date:	Tue, 3 Feb 2015 17:04:02 +0100
From:	"Serge E. Hallyn" <serge@...lyn.com>
To:	Mimi Zohar <zohar@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc:	Serge Hallyn <serge.hallyn@...ntu.com>,
	Casey Schaufler <casey@...aufler-ca.com>,
	Christoph Lameter <cl@...ux.com>,
	Serge Hallyn <serge.hallyn@...onical.com>,
	Andy Lutomirski <luto@...capital.net>,
	Jonathan Corbet <corbet@....net>,
	Aaron Jones <aaronmdjones@...il.com>, Ted Ts'o <tytso@....edu>,
	linux-security-module@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, akpm@...uxfoundation.org
Subject: Re: [capabilities] Allow normal inheritance for a configurable set
 of capabilities

Quoting Mimi Zohar (zohar@...ux.vnet.ibm.com):
> On Mon, 2015-02-02 at 18:08 +0000, Serge Hallyn wrote: 
> > Quoting Casey Schaufler (casey@...aufler-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.

Awesome, thanks for that :)

>   tar currently supports
> xattrs.

yes, I guess what i was thinking of was a (recent) bug to do with one
of the longer term support older systems.  Problem is people want to
run new releases in containers on older systems :)

Anyway when I said "over the years", the first was I believe in 2009/2010,
the last was in 2013 (at that LSS, when Ted mentioned it);  so yeah things have
gotten better with respect to this.

But AFAIK we don't yet have any good ideas for tackling the second issue below.

>   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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