Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 27 Jan 2005 20:11:20 +0100 | From | Ingo Molnar <> | Subject | Re: Patch 1/6 introduce sysctl |
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* Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz> wrote:
> Hi! > > > This first patch of the series introduces a sysctl (default off) that > > enables/disables the randomisation feature globally. Since randomisation may > > make it harder to debug really tricky situations (reproducability goes > > down), the sysadmin needs a way to disable it globally. > > Well, for distribution vendors, seeing "these reports from users are > same error" will becoe harder, too, and sysctl can not help there :-(.
this is true to a limited degree, but it's only part of the picture. When we first introduced address-space randomisation in Fedora 1 (almost 2 years ago) we were worried about this effect too, very much in fact.
What happened is that the _debugging infrastructure_ improved. Fedora introduced debug-info packages, so that we dont get any raw dumps of bugs anymore - what we get are nice symbolic backtraces which are easy to match up against each other.
also, we already have this effect in the mainline kernel - on P4's the stack is already randomized. Also, prelink (even the non-randomized variant) already creates a per-machine VM layout of libraries.
so, i'm glad to report, it's a non-issue. Sometimes developers want to disable randomisation during development (quick'n'easy hacks get quicker and easier - e.g. if you watch an address within gdb), so having the capability for unprivileged users to disable randomisation on the fly is useful and Fedora certainly offers that, but from a support and bug-reporting POV it's not a problem.
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