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Message-ID: <7b69d1470707190556n78e52232y7dfea1fd6f47ced@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2007 07:56:53 -0500
From: "Scott Preece" <sepreece@gmail.com>
To: "James Morris" <jmorris@namei.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH try #3] security: Convert LSM into a static interface
Cc: "Serge E. Hallyn" <serge@hallyn.com>, "Christian Ehrhardt" <lk@c--e.de>,
       "Andrew Morton" <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
       "Chris Wright" <chrisw@sous-sol.org>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
       linux-security-module@vger.kernel.org,
       "Stephen Smalley" <sds@tycho.nsa.gov>,
       "Serge E. Hallyn" <serue@us.ibm.com>,
       "Arjan van de Ven" <arjan@infradead.org>
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On 7/19/07, James Morris <jmorris@namei.org> wrote:
> On Thu, 19 Jul 2007, Serge E. Hallyn wrote:
>
> > If we could get a few (non-afilliated :) people who work with
> > customers in the security field to tell us whether this is being
> > used, that would be very helpful.  Not sure how to get that.
>
> The mainline kernel does not cater to out of tree code.

Please distinguish between "cater to" and "support". If the kernel
didn't worry about supporting out-of-tree code, then why would there
be loadable module at all?

Christian Ehrhardt already pointed to two reasons for loadable LSMs
that are sufficient to justify keeping them - so you can replace them
iteratively while you're developing them or choose between
alternatives.

Another twist is to use a tool to generate the module from a
policy-definition file; this could be done at boot-time or could be
done to replace the current policy on a running system (perhaps to add
a new domain corresponding to a newly added service). Yes, this would
need to be done with a lot of care, but part of providing mechanism
(rather than policy) is enabling people to use the mechanism in the
ways they prefer.

scott
-- 
scott preece