Bug 10193

Summary: rlocate has been locked out
Product: Other Reporter: Rudi Lippert (kernel)
Component: Loadable Security Modules (LSM)Assignee: Other/LSM (other_lsm)
Status: REJECTED INVALID    
Severity: normal CC: bunk, lakostis
Priority: P1    
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Kernel Version: 2.6.24 Subsystem:
Regression: --- Bisected commit-id:

Description Rudi Lippert 2008-03-07 03:00:04 UTC 
Latest working kernel version: 2.6.23
Earliest failing kernel version: 2.6.24
Distribution: Gentoo / any
Hardware Environment: any
Software Environment: any
Problem Description: rlocate relies on the functions mod_reg_security, register_security, which are no longer available to out-of-tree modules.

(rlocate uses a kernel module to track changes to the file system. The gathered data is indexed in real time and can be searched using the well-known locate command.)

From http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=207421
Quote:
It appears that there's no way to do this apart from changing the kernel itself
- a patch to do this adding a new kernel configuration option
"SECURITY_MODULAR" was offered in 
http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/10/23/3

but does not seem to have made it to the kernel tree, so it may be unsafe to
use.
With a kernel compiled with that option rlocate should work unpatched.
End Quote

Steps to reproduce:
- Download rlocate-0.5.6 from http://rlocate.sf.net
- Build on a system with >=2.6.24
Comment 1 Adrian Bunk 2008-03-07 10:37:06 UTC 
It is not the purpose of the Linux kernel to provide an API for external modules.

If functionality is missing in the kernel for implementing rlocate in userspace without an own module patches doing this should be submitted.