thoughts on modules-extra subpackage...

[Josh Boyer]

On Tue, Dec 06, 2011 at 04:55:04PM -0500, John W. Linville wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 06, 2011 at 04:19:35PM -0500, Chuck Ebbert wrote:
> > On Fri, 2 Dec 2011 13:38:51 -0500
> > "John W. Linville" <linville at redhat.com> wrote:
> > 
> > > As for the stated benefits...  I'm skeptical of the security argument.
> > > I mean, I can believe that a module could get accidentally or
> > > inadvertantly loaded and then exploited.  I just think that closing
> > > those holes is a better plan.
> > 
> > Unfortunately, network modules will be autoloaded if a program opens
> > a socket with that protocol. They've talked about securing that, but
> > it never happened.
> 
> That seems more realistic for a protocol module (e.g. sctp) than
> for a queueing discipline (e.g. sch_sfb) or a TCP congestion control
> algorithm (e.g. tcp_westwood).
> 
> > And there is a long history of security bugs being found in the new
> > and/or infrequently-used modules.
> 
> That's probably true.  I still wonder if that is common enough to be
> worth the change.

I'm still of the opinion we should just turn them off.

At the same time, we should probably be a bit more judicious about
enabling new drivers.  They're normally not all that great in their
first full release, so they should default to off until requested or
proven otherwise.

josh