Hi Greg,

quoted

An added advantage would be that during review it would stick out like a sore 
thumb if anyone used a 'weird' permission variant.

For example, if you saw these lines in a driver patch:

+	__ATTR(l1, 0444, driver_show_l4, NULL);
+		__ATTR(l3, 0446, driver_show_l4, NULL);
+			__ATTR(l2, 04444, driver_show_l4, NULL);
+		__ATTR(l4, 0444, driver_show_l4, NULL);

... would you notice it at a glance that it contains two security holes?

I've tried to deal with that in the past with the __ATTR_RW() and
__ATTR_RO() and __ATTR_WO() macros that more should be using.  I swept
the tree a few years ago to try to fix up most of them, but I know I
didn't catch them all, and more files have been added since then.

I said in another response that maybe module_param_rw and module_param_ro will make some sense. Not sure if they are easier to read or not. I mean for each usage, we could look at the tree and see what values are actually used. My bet is that for module_param only a few ones are used. I have the feeling it is 0444 or 0644 and nothing else. Maybe some outlaws with 0400 and 0600 that don't even need to be that secretive.

Regards

Marcel