docs/104403: man security should mention that the usage of the X Window Systen is only possible with kern.securitylevel=-1

Giorgos Keramidas keramida at freebsd.org
Sun Nov 12 13:40:43 UTC 2006


The following reply was made to PR docs/104403; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Giorgos Keramidas <keramida at freebsd.org>
To: Niclas Zeising <lothrandil at n00b.apagnu.se>
Cc: bug-followup at freebsd.org
Subject: Re: docs/104403: man security should mention that the usage of the X Window Systen is only possible with kern.securitylevel=-1
Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2006 14:37:44 +0100

 On 2006-11-12 10:52, Niclas Zeising <lothrandil at n00b.apagnu.se> wrote:
 >Giorgos Keramidas wrote:
 >>> With kern.securitylevel=0 or higher it is not possible to start X.
 >>
 >> You can still use `xdm' or a similar way of starting X11, because
 >> it will be started by init(8) before the securelevel is raised by
 >> the `/etc/rc.d/securelevel' script.
 >>
 >> I don't think this is worth mentioning in security(7), because
 >> we can't possibly document *ALL* the possible things that can
 >> fail with a bumped securelevel.
 >
 > It it probably worth mentioning somewhere, as it will avoid some foot
 > shooting from unaware users. One can discuss though that if the extra
 > security provided by the security level is needed, maybe the system
 > shouldn't run X in the first place.
 
 I'm not sure.
 
 Should we also mention that you can't "installworld" with an elevated
 securelevel, because chflags may fail to work and cause problems?
 Should we also mention that not being able to change the firewall rules
 can be tricky, if you are testing your new firewall ruleset, and get
 locked out?
 
 There are *MANY* ways in which an elevated securelevel can turn around
 and bite you in the ass, but do we _really_ have to enumerate them all
 in mind-boggingly detail?  ... in a single manpage?
 
 I really don't know.
 



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