linux/Documentation/sysctl
Eric Paris ed03218951 security: Protection for exploiting null dereference using mmap
Add a new security check on mmap operations to see if the user is attempting
to mmap to low area of the address space.  The amount of space protected is
indicated by the new proc tunable /proc/sys/vm/mmap_min_addr and defaults to
0, preserving existing behavior.

This patch uses a new SELinux security class "memprotect."  Policy already
contains a number of allow rules like a_t self:process * (unconfined_t being
one of them) which mean that putting this check in the process class (its
best current fit) would make it useless as all user processes, which we also
want to protect against, would be allowed. By taking the memprotect name of
the new class it will also make it possible for us to move some of the other
memory protect permissions out of 'process' and into the new class next time
we bump the policy version number (which I also think is a good future idea)

Acked-by: Stephen Smalley <sds@tycho.nsa.gov>
Acked-by: Chris Wright <chrisw@sous-sol.org>
Signed-off-by: Eric Paris <eparis@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>
2007-07-11 22:52:29 -04:00
..
abi.txt Linux-2.6.12-rc2 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -07:00
fs.txt Fix typos in /Documentation : Misc 2006-11-30 05:21:10 +01:00
kernel.txt misc doc and kconfig typos 2007-05-09 08:58:15 +02:00
README Linux-2.6.12-rc2 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -07:00
sunrpc.txt Linux-2.6.12-rc2 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -07:00
vm.txt security: Protection for exploiting null dereference using mmap 2007-07-11 22:52:29 -04:00

Documentation for /proc/sys/		kernel version 2.2.10
	(c) 1998, 1999,  Rik van Riel <riel@nl.linux.org>

'Why', I hear you ask, 'would anyone even _want_ documentation
for them sysctl files? If anybody really needs it, it's all in
the source...'

Well, this documentation is written because some people either
don't know they need to tweak something, or because they don't
have the time or knowledge to read the source code.

Furthermore, the programmers who built sysctl have built it to
be actually used, not just for the fun of programming it :-)

==============================================================

Legal blurb:

As usual, there are two main things to consider:
1. you get what you pay for
2. it's free

The consequences are that I won't guarantee the correctness of
this document, and if you come to me complaining about how you
screwed up your system because of wrong documentation, I won't
feel sorry for you. I might even laugh at you...

But of course, if you _do_ manage to screw up your system using
only the sysctl options used in this file, I'd like to hear of
it. Not only to have a great laugh, but also to make sure that
you're the last RTFMing person to screw up.

In short, e-mail your suggestions, corrections and / or horror
stories to: <riel@nl.linux.org>

Rik van Riel.

==============================================================

Introduction:

Sysctl is a means of configuring certain aspects of the kernel
at run-time, and the /proc/sys/ directory is there so that you
don't even need special tools to do it!
In fact, there are only four things needed to use these config
facilities:
- a running Linux system
- root access
- common sense (this is especially hard to come by these days)
- knowledge of what all those values mean

As a quick 'ls /proc/sys' will show, the directory consists of
several (arch-dependent?) subdirs. Each subdir is mainly about
one part of the kernel, so you can do configuration on a piece
by piece basis, or just some 'thematic frobbing'.

The subdirs are about:
abi/		execution domains & personalities
debug/		<empty>
dev/		device specific information (eg dev/cdrom/info)
fs/		specific filesystems
		filehandle, inode, dentry and quota tuning
		binfmt_misc <Documentation/binfmt_misc.txt>
kernel/		global kernel info / tuning
		miscellaneous stuff
net/		networking stuff, for documentation look in:
		<Documentation/networking/>
proc/		<empty>
sunrpc/		SUN Remote Procedure Call (NFS)
vm/		memory management tuning
		buffer and cache management

These are the subdirs I have on my system. There might be more
or other subdirs in another setup. If you see another dir, I'd
really like to hear about it :-)