Old kernels are a transition problem, security concicious people won't have
them around anyway. Moot point.
> 1. using the suid bit everything would work, but you would have
> potentially large security holes. (think of lilo being set for just the
> capabilities it needs, now when run on an older kernel it is suid root and
> anyone can run it not just root)
It is ugly as hell, and limits the kind of executables you can make
capable. It also keeps a "special user". That isn't possible under a pure
capability system, so this is at most a bridging solution, i.e., it doesn't
solve the problem, just papers over it.
> 2. using one of the many other methods mentioned things would break,
> potentially in ways that prevent you from even being ablt to shutdown the
> system (think of shutdown and reboot with capablities set, you could not
> run them)
Sure. Just put capabilities into the new filesystem. True, painful as the
a.out --> ELF transition, but if this is the right way of doing it, do it:
It's the Linux tradition, after all. Nobody says you can't fix the
capabilities before rebooting into the new, secure kernel for good.
-- Dr. Horst H. von Brand mailto:vonbrand@inf.utfsm.cl Departamento de Informatica Fono: +56 32 654431 Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria +56 32 654239 Casilla 110-V, Valparaiso, Chile Fax: +56 32 797513- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/