Re: [PATCH] Audit: fix audit nlmsg_len from the kernel
On Tue, 2009-06-02 at 16:45 -0400, Steve Grubb wrote:
On Tuesday 02 June 2009 04:38:02 pm Eric Paris wrote:
> > But lets fix it anyway rather than rely on dumb luck and implementation
> > details.
>
> Self NAK. Userspace was also written by someone who didn't know
> netlink. Since userspace is half using the netlink macros and half
> depending on this broken nlmsg_len implementation I don't think we can
> make any changes in the kernel and they wouldn't be backwards
> compatible...
The netlink code is the oldest part of the audit code and predates my
involvement. We could fix this if userspace had a way of querying the kernel to
see what the audit capabilities are. There have been many times that I've
wanted a way to ask the kernel if certain things are supported.
-Steve
Although yes, that lets new userspace work on old and new kernels it's
not the problem I'm thinking about. I'm more worried about new kernel
breaking old userspace, a huge no no, since the new kernel has no way of
knowing if userspace supports correct netlink semantics or not....
In any case, this patch should certainly not be applied.
-Eric