Package: klogd
Version: 1.4.1-18
Severity: wishlist

Hi,

Ubuntu's klogd has a -P option that does this:

       -P path
              Use path instead of /proc/kmsg as the source of the kernel
              message.  Specify "-" to read from standard input.  This
              allows klogd to run entirely without root privileges.

The idea then is to use a dd process to shovel messages from /proc/kmsg into
a fifo for klogd to read.

The security benefits, while admittedly somewhat far-fetched, should be
obvious (an attacker can theoretically exercise some control over the
messages the kernel logs, so a bug in klogd could conceivably be exploited
in this manner).

Additionally, this seems to work around a problem where klogd used to
"garble" kernel messages when they were arriving at a high rate (this isn't
easy to describe and probably impossible to reproduce on purpose: it's as if
some lines were logged incompletely, or fragments of other lines inserted).

Since Ubuntu obviously has a patch for -P, it shouldn't be hard to include
it in Debian's klogd too.

Andras

-- 
                 Andras Korn <korn at chardonnay.math.bme.hu>
                 <http://chardonnay.math.bme.hu/~korn/> QOTD:
                Energizer Bunny arrested. Charged with battery.


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