Re: [PATCH] proc: add "personality" to process status file

[Alexey Dobriyan <adobriyan@gmail.com>]

On Sat, Oct 04, 2008 at 05:48:43PM -0700, Arjan van de Ven wrote:
> On Sat, 4 Oct 2008 17:42:33 -0700
> Kees Cook <kees.cook@canonical.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Sat, Oct 04, 2008 at 04:42:39PM -0700, Arjan van de Ven wrote:
> > > On Sat, 4 Oct 2008 15:02:20 -0700
> > > Kees Cook <kees.cook@canonical.com> wrote:
> > > > Nothing else seemed appropriate, but I could make a brand new proc
> > > > file, if that's sensible.  "status_private" ?
> > > 
> > > how about a file called "personality" that has each set bit as an
> > > ascii version ?
> > > (one per line maybe)
> > 
> > Well, it's a one-to-many due to how the personality types are defined,
> > so doing a bitfield-to-ASCII-names conversion wouldn't really work
> > out:
> > 
> >         PER_SCOSVR3 =           0x0003 | STICKY_TIMEOUTS |
> >                                          WHOLE_SECONDS | SHORT_INODE,
> >         PER_OSR5 =              0x0003 | STICKY_TIMEOUTS |
> > WHOLE_SECONDS, ...
> >         PER_BSD =               0x0006,
> >         PER_SUNOS =             0x0006 | STICKY_TIMEOUTS,
> > 
> > But I can certainly just make it a stand-alone file with just the
> > bitfield.  Or, I can still do the conversion and ignore PER_OSR5 and
> > PER_SUNOS.
> 
> well.. if "you" as kernel can't really make out what it is, how is poor
> userspace supposed to do it ?

Kernel should just print with %lx and leave pretty-printing to
luserspace.

And name should be /proc/*/personality (obviously :-)

Assuming anybody cares about personalities at all.