Subject: enforcing DB immutability

From: Ingo Molnar <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 09:40:53 +0200

* Linus Torvalds <[email-masked]> wrote:

> On Wed, 13 Apr 2005, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> > 
> > well, the 'owned by another user' solution is valid though, and doesnt 
> > have this particular problem. (We've got a secure multiuser OS, so can 
> > as well use it to protect the DB against corruption.)
> 
> So now you need root to set up new repositories? No thanks.

yeah, it's a bit awkward to protect uncompressed repositories - but it 
will need some sort of kernel enforcement. (if userspace finds out the 
DB contains uncompressed blobs, it _will_ try to use them.)

(perhaps having an in-kernel GIT-alike versioned filesystem will help - 
but that brings up the same 'I have to be root' issues. The FS will 
enforce the true immutability of objects.)

perhaps having a new 'immutable hardlink' feature in the Linux VFS would 
help? I.e. a hardlink that can only be readonly followed, and can be 
removed, but cannot be chmod-ed to a writeable hardlink. That i think 
would be a large enough barrier for editors/build-tools not to play the 
tricks they already do that makes 'readonly' files virtually 
meaningless.

	Ingo