From owner-freebsd-security Thu Jun 24 22:45: 4 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-security@freebsd.org Received: from srh0710.urh.uiuc.edu (srh0710.urh.uiuc.edu [130.126.76.32]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 99F3415105 for ; Thu, 24 Jun 1999 22:45:01 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from ftobin@bigfoot.com) Received: (qmail 63540 invoked by uid 1000); 25 Jun 1999 05:45:00 -0000 Received: from localhost (sendmail-bs@127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 25 Jun 1999 05:45:00 -0000 Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1999 00:45:00 -0500 (CDT) From: Frank Tobin X-Sender: ftobin@srh0710.urh.uiuc.edu To: FreeBSD-security Mailing List Subject: file flags during low securelevels Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org I'm curious as to why file flags are in effect during low kernel securelevels ( < 1 ). Would it be undesirable to have these flags not in effect during low securelevels, because they can be turned off at any time? The reason I ask is that situations may arise where the whole system is simmutablized, but the administrator wants to do wide-scale file-replacement (e.g., make world) while the system is in single-user mode. Currently that would be a big PITA, since you'd have to make sure you unflag all files before replacing them. Also, during system bootup, it is not unreasonable to assume that some process would want to edit some files at boot time, but these files can be flagged after startup (e.g., /var/log/messages rotated upon startup, but then sappend'd). Is there a performance hit I'm not thinking off here? Or could we make this another sysctl knob (kern.fileflagsignored) or such? -- Frank Tobin "To learn what is good and what is to be http://www.bigfoot.com/~ftobin valued, those truths which cannot be shaken or changed." Myst: The Book of Atrus FreeBSD: The Power To Serve PGPenvelope = GPG and PGP5 + Pine PGP: 4F86 3BBB A816 6F0A 340F http://www.bigfoot.com/~ftobin/resources.html 6003 56FF D10A 260C 4FA3 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-security" in the body of the message