Re: [PATCH v5 1/3] Provide in-kernel headers to make extending kernel easier

From: Karim Yaghmour
Date: Tue Apr 16 2019 - 09:32:46 EST



On 4/16/19 9:04 AM, Joel Fernandes wrote:
On Tue, Apr 16, 2019 at 02:49:39PM +0200, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
On Tue, Apr 16, 2019 at 08:33:06AM -0400, Steven Rostedt wrote:
On Mon, 15 Apr 2019 22:50:10 -0500
Kees Cook <keescook@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Mon, Apr 15, 2019 at 9:41 AM Steven Rostedt <rostedt@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I agree with this assessment. We shouldn't use config.gz as precedence
for this solution. config.gz should have been in debugfs to begin with,
but I don't believe debugfs was around when config.gz was introduced.
(Don't have time to look into the history of the two).

I don't agree with this: /proc/config.gz is used by a lot of tools
that do sanity-check of running systems. This isn't _debugging_...
it's verifying correct kernel builds. It's a fancy version of checking
/proc/version.


Then we should perhaps make a new file system call tarballs ;-)

/sys/kernel/tarballs/

and place everything there. That way it removes it from /proc (which is
the worse place for that) and also makes it something other than debug.
That's what I did for tracefs.

As horrible as that suggestion is, it does kind of make sense :)

We can't put this in debugfs as that's only for debugging and systems
should never have that mounted for normal operations (users want to
build ebpf programs), and /proc really should be for processes but that
horse is long left the barn.

But, I'm willing to consider putting this either in a system-fs-like
filesystem, or just in sysfs itself, we do have /sys/kernel/ to play
around in if the main objection is that we should not be cluttering up
/proc with stuff like this.


I am ok with the suggestion of /sys/kernel for the archive. That also seems
to fit well with the idea that the headers are kernel related and probably
belong here more strictly speaking, than /proc.

This makes sense. And if it alleviates concerns regarding extending /proc ABIs then might as well switch to this.

Olof, what do you think of this?

--
Karim Yaghmour
CEO - Opersys inc. / www.opersys.com
http://twitter.com/karimyaghmour