Re: Clarifications of LSM API

From: Serge E. Hallyn (hallyn@private)
Date: Tue Jun 29 2004 - 07:22:46 PDT

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    > On Tue, 2004-06-29 at 09:35, Serge E. Hallyn wrote:
    > > I do plan on attempting the following steps to ease stacking:
    > > 
    > > 1. submit a patch to allow multiple LSM's to use the kernel object security
    > > pointers, such as inode->i_security.  This won't fly before 2.7, and will
    > > likely meet a lot of resistance.  (Though it might help if there are people
    > > speaking up when I'm shot down  :)
    > > 
    > > 2. submit a generalized version of the stacker LSM (hopefully without the
    > > blob_stacking.c part, since part 1 will achieve this) to be kept in the
    > > kernel tree as another LSM.
    > 
    > Why not just use a common blob header and chain multiple security blobs
    > on the existing security field, as suggested previously on this list? 
    > That will require adjusting those modules that want to support such
    > stacking, but that is not unreasonable.
    
    My proposal (basically bsd's implementation) would also require adjusting
    existing modules.
    
    My concerns with your approach:
    
    1. We might be adding many kmalloc's.  It is certainly not the case that
    every security blob assignment leads to a kmalloc.  Often it just
    leads to a copy of an already allocated structure.  Now a kmalloc would
    always be required.
    
    2. The difference in aesthetics and readability between directly using
    inode->i_security[my_index] and always walking/tweaking linked lists is
    imo pretty great.
    
    3. Performance concerns have already been mentioned, I see.
    
    However it is a nice non-invasive (kernel-wise) solution.  I will do some
    performance tests between the two approaches, hopefully with three modules.
    I hope to do this during july.
    
    thanks,
    -serge
    



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