Re: [PATCH 1/3] coredump: cleanup documentation for suid_dumpable

[Alan Cox]

> > NAK - this feature is actively used and can be set by the sysctl
> > interface. The PRCTL fixup was just a bug being fixed. The sysctl
> > interface is still relevant.
> 
> Thank you for correcting me. Appreciated. I am not aware that it is still
> being actively used. May I know who or which program is using this feature?

Not programs - people. 

When you want to debug a large complex system with multiple setuid
applications it can rapidly get quite unpleasant. If you
set /proc/sys/kernel/suid_dumpable to 2 and /proc/sys/kernel/core_pattern
then it becomes possible to get hold of all the core dumps and debug the
system as a whole. The system is not secure in this state but while you
are doing that kind of debug on a devel system its usually acceptable.

Secondly we don't break userspace interfaces except in extreme cases -
proc/sys/kernel/suid_dumpable is a user space interface

Alan
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