Re: caps in elf, next itteration (the hack get's bigger)

Dave Jones. (djones2@glam.ac.uk)
Wed, 14 Apr 1999 16:45:30 +0000 ( )


On Wed, 14 Apr 1999 alex.buell@tahallah.demon.co.uk wrote:

> Looking over the discussions on this subject for the past week or so, it
> looks like we're trying to kludge capabilities into Linux.

I thought the same thing. It could get really ugly if this is implemented
without _thought_, which seems to be what some people are trying to do.

> - this has the potential to make it completely unportable to different
> filesystems (i.e trying to run Linux off NTFS for example 8)

Yeuch, that's bordering on perverse. And I thought UMSDOS was as low as
people would want to go :)

> capability-enhanced kernels SHOULD not be able to run older ELF
> binaries. Then we can properly encode capabilities into the binaries,
> yet enforce security.

Would you need to kill ELFs completely ? You could just run them with a
minimal capability setting. I don't think ELFs are ready to go the way of
a.out just yet.

> Ah, this thought just hit me just now. What we're trying to do is clone
> VAX/VMS!! 8)

Nooooo!!

regards,

d.
_____________________________________________________________
| Dave 'Barc0de' Jones. (barc0de@digital-corruption.net) |
| http://www.comp.glam.ac.uk/students/djones2/ |
|_____________________________________________________________|

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