[xfs-masters] Re: [RFC: 2.6 patch] make the *FS_SECURITY options no longer user visible

[Stephen Smalley <sds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 2007-07-30 at 09:29 +1000, David Chinner wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 29, 2007 at 05:02:09PM +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> > Please correct me if any of the following assumptions is wrong:
> > - SELinux is currently the only user of filesystem security labels
> >   shipped with the Linux kernel
> > - if a user has SELinux enabled he wants his filesystems to support
> >   security labels
> > 
> > Based on these assumption, it doesn't make sense to have the
> > *FS_SECURITY user visible since we can perfectly determine automatically 
> > when turning them on makes sense.
> 
> Hmmm. The code in XFS is not dependent on selinux, but this change
> would mean that testing the security xattr namespace would require a
> selinux enabled kernel.
> 
> I agree that the default for these should be "y" and selected if
> selinux is enabled, but forcing us to use selinux enabled kernels
> (on distro's that may not support selinux) just to test the
> security xattr namespace is a bit of a pain.

You can enable SECURITY_SELINUX in the kernel config but still have it
boot disabled by default via SECURITY_SELINUX_BOOTPARAM_VALUE=0.

-- 
Stephen Smalley
National Security Agency