Zack's Kernel News
Zack's Kernel News
Chronicler Zack Brown reports on the latest news, views, dilemmas, and developments within the Linux kernel community.
Extending Capabilities This Way and That
Eric W. Biederman wanted to find a good way to give one process a subset of the capabilities available to another process. Capabilities is a finer-grained set of permissions than regular ownership and read/write/execute permissions. It was defined in a POSIX draft that never became official, so the true nature and behavior of Unix capabilities has no official standard. It makes for craziness.
Eric's idea was to define a couple of new system calls, called fsyscall() and fsyscall_create(). The main call, fsyscall(), would take another system call number as one parameter and a set of capabilities as another; then, it would run the targeted system call using the given set of capabilities, rather than those of the calling process.
He asked Andy Lutomirski's opinion, but Andy pointed out that system call numbers were not as clean as Eric thought. Specifically, Not all system calls were directly callable by number using the ABI (application binary interface). Andy said he was actually working on the problem from almost the opposite angle, to "have a way that one task can trap into a special mode in which another process can do syscalls on its behalf."
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Framework Laptop 13 Pro Competes with the Best
Framework has released what might be considered the MacBook of Linux devices.
-
The Latest CachyOS Features Supercharged Kernel
The latest release of CachyOS brings with it an enhanced version of the latest Linux kernel.
-
Kernel 7.0 Is a Bit More Rusty
Linux kernel 7.0 has been released for general availability, with Rust finally getting its due.
-
France Says "Au Revoir" to Microsoft
In a move that should surprise no one, France announced plans to reduce its reliance on US technology, and Microsoft Windows is the first to get the boot.
-
CIQ Releases Compatibility Catalog for Rocky Linux
The company behind Rocky Linux is making an open catalog available to developers, hobbyists, and other contributors, so they can verify and publish compatibility with the CIQ lineup.
-
KDE Gets Some Resuscitation
KDE is bringing back two themes that vanished a few years ago, putting a bit more air under its wings.
-
Ubuntu 26.04 Beta Arrives with Some Surprises
Ubuntu 26.04 is almost here, but the beta version has been released, and it might surprise some people.
-
Ubuntu MATE Dev Leaving After 12 years
Martin Wimpress, the maintainer of Ubuntu MATE, is now searching for his successor. Are you the next in line?
-
Kali Linux Waxes Nostalgic with BackTrack Mode
For those who've used Kali Linux since its inception, the changes with the new release are sure to put a smile on your face.
-
Gnome 50 Smooths Out NVIDIA GPU Issues
Gamers rejoice, your favorite pastime just got better with Gnome 50 and NVIDIA GPUs.