Hi, Scott, Guennadi.

On 13/10/2008, at 16:44, Scott Wood wrote:

On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 08:05:09PM +0200, Guennadi Liakhovetski wrote:

quoted

On Mon, 13 Oct 2008, Rog=E9rio Brito wrote:

quoted

The current defconfig for Linkstation/Kuroboxes has the "Disable =20
Heap
Randomization" option enabled.

Since some of these machines are facing the internet, it helps to =20=

quoted

quoted

have
heap randomization enabled. This patch enables it.

Same as the previous patch - this is one of options, that users =20
select
according to their needs. If any specific distribution enables =20
this option
by default in their kernels, they can do this too, don't think =20
this is
critical enough to patch the defconfig.

I think that the matter is not being critical or not, but of =20
including a sane default as the kernel should be a place for best-=20
current-practices.

Just because users/distros can change it doesn't mean it's =20
pointless to
discuss what default is sane, and make changes if the current default
isn't.

Exactly my point.

For security-related options it's usually best to default to the more
secure state, especially since the option description talks about it
being needed mainly for libc5 compatibility -- did libc5 ever even =20
exist
for powerpc?

I don't know, but even Debian's very ancient distributions all came =20
with libc6 on powerpc.

The only reason it was turned on in the first place was likely the
"default y", which in turn is there to avoid breaking old x86 distros.

Exactly. Agreed 100%.


Regards, Rog=E9rio Brito.

--=20
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