ptrace: permit ptracing of /sbin/init
authorOleg Nesterov <oleg@tv-sign.ru>
Wed, 30 Apr 2008 07:53:15 +0000 (00:53 -0700)
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Wed, 30 Apr 2008 15:29:38 +0000 (08:29 -0700)
commit00cd5c37afd5f431ac186dd131705048c0a11fdb
treed5412f6c720e2cee11ac66783bb45e6bd78f4a1d
parent33e9fc7d01269737cd5a3b6de1db9d0e796ab708
ptrace: permit ptracing of /sbin/init

Afaics, currently there are no kernel problems with ptracing init, it can't
lose SIGNAL_UNKILLABLE flag and be killed/stopped by accident.

The ability to strace/debug init can be very useful if you try to figure out
why it does not work as expected.

However, admin should know what he does, "gdb /sbin/init 1" stops init, it
can't reap orphaned zombies or take care of /etc/inittab until continued.  It
is even possible to crash init (and thus the whole system) if you wish,
ptracer has full control.

See also the long discussion: http://marc.info/?t=120628018600001

Signed-off-by: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@tv-sign.ru>
Acked-by: Roland McGrath <roland@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Pavel Emelyanov <xemul@openvz.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
kernel/ptrace.c