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Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2012 17:50:04 -0700
From: Andrew Lutomirski <luto@....edu>
To: mtk.manpages@...il.com
Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@....net>, Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>, 
	Will Drewry <wad@...omium.org>, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, 
	linux-security-module@...r.kernel.org, linux-arch@...r.kernel.org, 
	linux-doc@...r.kernel.org, kernel-hardening@...ts.openwall.com, 
	netdev@...r.kernel.org, x86@...nel.org, arnd@...db.de, davem@...emloft.net, 
	hpa@...or.com, mingo@...hat.com, oleg@...hat.com, peterz@...radead.org, 
	rdunlap@...otime.net, mcgrathr@...omium.org, tglx@...utronix.de, 
	eparis@...hat.com, serge.hallyn@...onical.com, djm@...drot.org, 
	scarybeasts@...il.com, indan@....nu, pmoore@...hat.com, 
	eric.dumazet@...il.com, markus@...omium.org, coreyb@...ux.vnet.ibm.com, 
	keescook@...omium.org, jmorris@...ei.org, 
	Andy Lutomirski <luto@...capital.net>, linux-man@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH v17 01/15] Add PR_{GET,SET}_NO_NEW_PRIVS to prevent execve
 from granting privs

On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 12:31 PM, Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)
<mtk.manpages@...il.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 7, 2012 at 8:28 AM, Jonathan Corbet <corbet@....net> wrote:
>> On Fri, 6 Apr 2012 13:01:17 -0700
>> Andrew Lutomirski <luto@....edu> wrote:
>>
>>> This has been bugging me for awhile.  Is there any interest in moving
>>> the manpages into the kernel source tree?  Then there could be a
>>> general requirement that new APIs get documented when they're written.
>>
>> Man page (or other documentation) requirements for patch acceptance are a
>> regular kernel summit feature.  People seem to think it's a good idea, but
>> actual enforcement of such requirements always seems to be lacking.  Lots
>> of people have kind of given up trying.  I don't really see that adding
>> the man pages to the tree would help, but I could be wrong...
>
> I largely consider this (moving man pages to kernel.org) a technical
> solution to what is fundamentally a social problem (developers
> reluctant to write documentation), and doubt that the technical
> solution would make much difference. I'd love to be proved wrong, but
> the experiment would require significant start-up effort. (My
> collected thoughts on this can be found here:
> http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/todo.html#migrate_to_kernel_source.
> Note the alternative idea of patch tags mentioned at the end of that
> text.)
>
> Unless, or until there's a paid maintainer, I don't expect things to
> get significantly better than what they currently are. The quite
> significant improvements in man-pages since 2004, when I became
> maintainer were in small part due to the fact that I was for a short
> period paid to do the work, but in much larger part due to a huge
> private effort over those years which over the last couple of years is
> no longer unsustainable for me (man-pages is in competition with
> requirements for my attention from family, working life, and
> (seriously!) seismic events),

Hrm.  Maybe someone could convince Andrew and Linus not to pull new
syscalls or major ABI features unless the patchset includes full docs.

Anyway, I'll write up a detailed description of PR_SET_NO_NEW_PRIVS,
stick it in the changelog, and cc linux-doc.

--Andy

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