Re: [PATCH 03/14] LSM/SELinux: inode_{get,set,notify}secctx hooksto access LSM security context information.

From: David P. Quigley
Date: Fri Dec 05 2008 - 10:47:21 EST


On Fri, 2008-12-05 at 20:58 +1100, James Morris wrote:
> On Wed, 26 Nov 2008, David P. Quigley wrote:
>
> > + * @inode_getsecctx:
> > + * Returns a string containing all relavent security context information
> > + *
> > + * @inode we wish to set the security context of.
> > + * @ctx is a pointer in which to place the allocated security context.
> > + * @ctxlen points to the place to put the length of @ctx.
> > * This is the main security structure.
> > */
> > struct security_operations {
> > @@ -1479,6 +1514,10 @@ struct security_operations {
> > int (*secctx_to_secid) (const char *secdata, u32 seclen, u32 *secid);
> > void (*release_secctx) (char *secdata, u32 seclen);
> >
> > + int (*inode_notifysecctx)(struct inode *inode, void *ctx, u32 ctxlen);
> > + int (*inode_setsecctx)(struct dentry *dentry, void *ctx, u32 ctxlen);
> > + int (*inode_getsecctx)(struct inode *inode, void **ctx, u32 *ctxlen);
>
> For inode_getsecctx(), you're returning the length via the return value,
> so you should not also need to pass in a pointer to ctxlen, right?
>
> IMHO, it's clearer and simpler to always only return error status from
> these kinds of functions, and to pass things like size back via pointer
> args, although it seems that a few mixed return functions have crept in to
> the code over time. My preference would be to convert it to return value
> is error status only, with the length entirely separate as a pointer arg.
>
>
> - James

I'll have to look into why we did it this way. The discussion for these
patches happened many months ago so I don't remember why it was done
this way. I remember at the time getting an approval for the approach
but a desire not to merge the patch while there were no users of it.

Dave

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