Re: syscall convention

From: Valdis.Kletnieksat_private
Date: Thu Aug 23 2001 - 00:01:06 PDT

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    On Wed, 22 Aug 2001 08:57:18 PDT, richard offer <offerat_private>  said:
    > There was some discussion regarding which error code to return ENOSYS or
    > ENOPKG. ENOSYS would mean that you couldn't distinguish between a kernel
    > without LSM and a kernel with LSM but running a policy that doesn't provide
    > sys_security(). If this is important we should switch to returning ENOPKG,
    > I'm not sure it is.
    
    ENOPKG.  I can think of scenarios where it's important.
    
    THe first 2:30AM example I can think of is during very early system boot.
    While still running on the initrd, you may want to be able to probe the
    kernel to verify that it *HAS* LSM support and issue a /sbin/halt if it
    doesn't (if your security model wants fail-secure in case a LILO screw-up
    gives us a non-LSM kernel, we can die fast and leave a pretty corpse,
    rather than a horrid death somewhere in the guts if /etc/rc5.d ;)
    
    People *will* need to distinguish between ENOPKG ("lights are on but
    nobody's home" - response is 'insmod') and ENOSYS ("lights are off due
    to power failure" - response is 'bail out').
    
    				Valdis Kletnieks
    				Operating Systems Analyst
    				Virginia Tech
    
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