[PATCH] powerpc: enable heap randomization for linkstations
Rogério Brito
rbrito at ime.usp.br
Tue Oct 14 07:56:38 EST 2008
Hi, Scott, Guennadi.
On 13/10/2008, at 16:44, Scott Wood wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 08:05:09PM +0200, Guennadi Liakhovetski wrote:
>> On Mon, 13 Oct 2008, Rogério Brito wrote:
>>
>>> The current defconfig for Linkstation/Kuroboxes has the "Disable
>>> Heap
>>> Randomization" option enabled.
>>>
>>> Since some of these machines are facing the internet, it helps to
>>> have
>>> heap randomization enabled. This patch enables it.
>>
>> Same as the previous patch - this is one of options, that users
>> select
>> according to their needs. If any specific distribution enables
>> this option
>> by default in their kernels, they can do this too, don't think
>> this is
>> critical enough to patch the defconfig.
I think that the matter is not being critical or not, but of
including a sane default as the kernel should be a place for best-
current-practices.
> Just because users/distros can change it doesn't mean it's
> pointless to
> discuss what default is sane, and make changes if the current default
> isn't.
Exactly my point.
> For security-related options it's usually best to default to the more
> secure state, especially since the option description talks about it
> being needed mainly for libc5 compatibility -- did libc5 ever even
> exist
> for powerpc?
I don't know, but even Debian's very ancient distributions all came
with libc6 on powerpc.
> The only reason it was turned on in the first place was likely the
> "default y", which in turn is there to avoid breaking old x86 distros.
Exactly. Agreed 100%.
Regards, Rogério Brito.
--
Rogério Brito : rbrito@{mackenzie,ime.usp}.br : GPG key 1024D/7C2CAEB8
http://www.ime.usp.br/~rbrito : http://meusite.mackenzie.com.br/rbrito
Projects: algorithms.berlios.de : lame.sf.net : vrms.alioth.debian.org
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