Re: RFC: changing the "+" in ls -l output to be "." or "+"

[Daniel J Walsh]

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Jim Meyering wrote:
> Russell Coker <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
>> On Saturday 25 October 2008 00:19, Mike Edenfield <address@hidden> wrote:
>>> Jim Meyering wrote:
>>>> A desire for compatibility makes "+" look good.
>>>> "." is appealing for SELinux-only because it's inconspicuous.
>>> Speaking as a fairly new SELinux user/admin, having a "."
>>> next to every file in my ls output is just as useful or
>>> non-useful as having a "+" next to them, so does it really
>>> buy anything?  I end up needing -Z either way.
>> http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=472590
>>
>> The above URL has the history of this discussion.  I requested that there be
>> no such notification.  I still believe that there should be nothing used in
>> the case of SE Linux (although I could be convinced that the "." is OK if
>> files with the context "system_u:object_r:file_t:s0" did not have it).
>>
>> But it seems that I have lost this debate.  Using "." is better than "+", and
>> my request to have none of this in Lenny has been accepted so we have some
>> time to work on this before Lenny+1.
>>
>>> Based on the kind of real-world problems I've had, the most
>>> useful thing ls could tell me about a file on my SELinux
>>> system would be that it *should* have a label and *doesn't*,
>>> something like:
>>>
>>> if ( selinux_enabled )
>>>    if ( label == NULL || label == fs.defaultlabel )
>>>      use "!"
>>>    else
>>>      use " "
>>> else if ( anything else )
>>>    use "+"
>> That sounds quite reasonable.
> 
> Actually, I'm leaning your way, now, and agree.
> 
> If you, Russell, write the patch (w/NEWS and docs would be really nice)
> I'll make the switch upstream pretty soon.  It'd be nice to give the
> austin group a heads up, too, since this behavior would be contrary to
> POSIX.  I don't think it's worth it to make this depend on the setting
> of the POSIXLY_CORRECT envvar.
> 
> --
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If you really wanted to go wild, you could add a qualifier to check
matchpathcon to indicate it differs from the default for the file
system, although it would be very expensive.  Perhaps find would be a
better source.  "find" all files not matching the system defaults.
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