New in-kernel privilege API: priv(9)

[Ceri Davies]

On Wed, Sep 13, 2006 at 09:28:24PM +0100, Robert Watson wrote:

> A couple of points:
> 
> First, the system present in Solaris is, in effect, a variant of some draft 
> of POSIX.1e (or possibly vice versa), albeit with differently named 
> constants. All the comments I made regarding POSIX.1e apply to it.  
> Specifically, the priv(9) kernel API offers much more fine-grained 
> assignment of rights relating to system administration, etc, corresponding 
> specifically to the set of privileges defined in our kernel.

Agreed.

> Second, privileges(5) describes an alternative privilege model exposed to 
> userspace, whereas the work I've described is an in-kernel API for 
> privilege checking.  It doesn't imply (or, for that matter, implement) a 
> change in the OS privilege model, although clearly it would facilitate 
> doing that in the future.  Since priv(9) is not an application API, it's 
> not clear that application portability is an immediate concern.

That's the difference I was looking for, thanks.

> I think it's useful to compare the Solaris privilege set, and also consider 
> whether in the future we want to adopt a privilege model along similar 
> lines. However, given that the privilege models across various UNIX and 
> non-UNIX systems are all similar and yet completely different, I'm not sure 
> that being similar and yet different from Solaris is particularly a problem 
> -- more, say, than being similar but different from IRIX, Linux, Windows, 
> etc.

True enough.  Thanks.

Ceri
-- 
That must be wonderful!  I don't understand it at all.
                                                  -- Moliere
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