Re: [PATCH] ext2: Don't export ext2_mask_flags() to user space

[Thierry Reding <thierry.reding@avionic-design.de>]

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* Ted Ts'o wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 11:23:57PM +0100, Jan Kara wrote:
> >   Frankly, anybody seriously wanting to do anything with ext[2-4]
> > filesystems should use header files as provided by libext2fs. So I wonder
> > if just unexporting the whole file wouldn't be the best solution going
> > forward. Ted, do you have opinion?
> 
> Agreed, it's been almost 8 years since e2fsprogs used the
> include/linux/ext2_fs.h (the last version that needed it was e2fsprogs
> 1.35, released February 28, 2004).
> 
> There shouldn't be *anyone* using any of the ext2/3/4 kernel header
> files.  The only program that might be cheating and using kernel
> header files is ext3grep, as the author wasn't willing to fix his
> applications to use libext2fs.  (As a result, it doesn't work on ext4
> file systems, where as properly coded programs that do use libext2fs
> often work just fine on ext4, such as e2tools, which hasn't been
> modified for something like eight years but which works on ext4 just
> fine.)
> 
> So yeah, I'd just unexport ext2_fs.h, and probably ext3_fs.h as well.

Alright. Do you want me to send a patch to do so?

What's the recommended fix for packages that cannot or will not use
libext2fs, like busybox? Copy the required parts into a private header
and use that instead?

Thierry

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