linux-stable/Documentation/sysctl
Linus Torvalds 2d6bb6adb7 New gcc plugin: stackleak
- Introduces the stackleak gcc plugin ported from grsecurity by Alexander
   Popov, with x86 and arm64 support.
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Merge tag 'stackleak-v4.20-rc1' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/kees/linux

Pull stackleak gcc plugin from Kees Cook:
 "Please pull this new GCC plugin, stackleak, for v4.20-rc1. This plugin
  was ported from grsecurity by Alexander Popov. It provides efficient
  stack content poisoning at syscall exit. This creates a defense
  against at least two classes of flaws:

   - Uninitialized stack usage. (We continue to work on improving the
     compiler to do this in other ways: e.g. unconditional zero init was
     proposed to GCC and Clang, and more plugin work has started too).

   - Stack content exposure. By greatly reducing the lifetime of valid
     stack contents, exposures via either direct read bugs or unknown
     cache side-channels become much more difficult to exploit. This
     complements the existing buddy and heap poisoning options, but
     provides the coverage for stacks.

  The x86 hooks are included in this series (which have been reviewed by
  Ingo, Dave Hansen, and Thomas Gleixner). The arm64 hooks have already
  been merged through the arm64 tree (written by Laura Abbott and
  reviewed by Mark Rutland and Will Deacon).

  With VLAs having been removed this release, there is no need for
  alloca() protection, so it has been removed from the plugin"

* tag 'stackleak-v4.20-rc1' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/kees/linux:
  arm64: Drop unneeded stackleak_check_alloca()
  stackleak: Allow runtime disabling of kernel stack erasing
  doc: self-protection: Add information about STACKLEAK feature
  fs/proc: Show STACKLEAK metrics in the /proc file system
  lkdtm: Add a test for STACKLEAK
  gcc-plugins: Add STACKLEAK plugin for tracking the kernel stack
  x86/entry: Add STACKLEAK erasing the kernel stack at the end of syscalls
2018-11-01 11:46:27 -07:00
..
abi.txt
fs.txt namei: allow restricted O_CREAT of FIFOs and regular files 2018-08-23 18:48:43 -07:00
kernel.txt stackleak: Allow runtime disabling of kernel stack erasing 2018-09-04 10:35:48 -07:00
net.txt bpf: add bpf_jit_limit knob to restrict unpriv allocations 2018-10-25 17:11:42 -07:00
README docs: Update binfmt_misc links 2017-10-03 15:23:38 -06:00
sunrpc.txt
user.txt Documentation/sysctl/user.txt: fix typo 2018-02-06 18:32:48 -08:00
vm.txt Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt: update __vm_enough_memory()'s path 2018-08-22 10:52:44 -07:00

Documentation for /proc/sys/		kernel version 2.2.10
	(c) 1998, 1999,  Rik van Riel <riel@nl.linux.org>

'Why', I hear you ask, 'would anyone even _want_ documentation
for them sysctl files? If anybody really needs it, it's all in
the source...'

Well, this documentation is written because some people either
don't know they need to tweak something, or because they don't
have the time or knowledge to read the source code.

Furthermore, the programmers who built sysctl have built it to
be actually used, not just for the fun of programming it :-)

==============================================================

Legal blurb:

As usual, there are two main things to consider:
1. you get what you pay for
2. it's free

The consequences are that I won't guarantee the correctness of
this document, and if you come to me complaining about how you
screwed up your system because of wrong documentation, I won't
feel sorry for you. I might even laugh at you...

But of course, if you _do_ manage to screw up your system using
only the sysctl options used in this file, I'd like to hear of
it. Not only to have a great laugh, but also to make sure that
you're the last RTFMing person to screw up.

In short, e-mail your suggestions, corrections and / or horror
stories to: <riel@nl.linux.org>

Rik van Riel.

==============================================================

Introduction:

Sysctl is a means of configuring certain aspects of the kernel
at run-time, and the /proc/sys/ directory is there so that you
don't even need special tools to do it!
In fact, there are only four things needed to use these config
facilities:
- a running Linux system
- root access
- common sense (this is especially hard to come by these days)
- knowledge of what all those values mean

As a quick 'ls /proc/sys' will show, the directory consists of
several (arch-dependent?) subdirs. Each subdir is mainly about
one part of the kernel, so you can do configuration on a piece
by piece basis, or just some 'thematic frobbing'.

The subdirs are about:
abi/		execution domains & personalities
debug/		<empty>
dev/		device specific information (eg dev/cdrom/info)
fs/		specific filesystems
		filehandle, inode, dentry and quota tuning
		binfmt_misc <Documentation/admin-guide/binfmt-misc.rst>
kernel/		global kernel info / tuning
		miscellaneous stuff
net/		networking stuff, for documentation look in:
		<Documentation/networking/>
proc/		<empty>
sunrpc/		SUN Remote Procedure Call (NFS)
vm/		memory management tuning
		buffer and cache management
user/		Per user per user namespace limits

These are the subdirs I have on my system. There might be more
or other subdirs in another setup. If you see another dir, I'd
really like to hear about it :-)