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Status of capabilities?

DISCUSSION Michael Kerrisk 1 participant 1 message May 10, 2002

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Gidday,

What are the current status and future of capabilites? There seems to be no up-to-date information on this anywhere.

It seems capabilities have been partly implemented since 2.2. That is to say:

1. The kernel checks (effective) capabilities when performing various operations.

2. System calls are provided to raise and lower capabilties

What's still missing in 2.4, as far as I can see after reading the sources, is the ability to set capabilities on executable files so that a process gains those privileges when executing the file. I recall seeing some information somewhere saying this wasn't possible / wasn't going to happen for ext2. Is it on the drawing board for any file system?

Thanks

Michael

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