Re: Upstream first policy

[Al Viro]

On Mon, Mar 08, 2010 at 10:59:11AM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:

> > I'm not fond of selinux, to put it mildly, but "pathname-based" stuff simply
> > doesn't match how the pathname resolution is defined on Unix...
> 
> Again, I'm not claiming that we should change how "open" works and has 
> always worked. I don't even understand why you have that crazy "either or" 
> mentality to begin with. Why?
> 
> It's not "either pathname or inode". I'm saying _both_ make sense. 
> 
> In some situations, the name itself really is what is fundamentally 
> special about the file.

And mapping from names to files is a function of contents of many objects.
You need to protect that contents on all objects involved *anyway*.  Which
leaves what for "protecting by pathname"?

I'm not saying that it's either or.  I am saying that it's been oversold
to hell and back, BTW, but that's a separate story.  And I'm very sceptical
about separate protection of different directory entries, which is *all*
that is left for pathname-based stuff, AFAICS.
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