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ptrace: permit ptracing of /sbin/init
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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>
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Oleg Nesterov authored and Linus Torvalds committed Apr 30, 2008
1 parent 33e9fc7 commit 00cd5c3
Showing 1 changed file with 0 additions and 8 deletions.
8 changes: 0 additions & 8 deletions kernel/ptrace.c
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -168,8 +168,6 @@ int ptrace_attach(struct task_struct *task)
audit_ptrace(task);

retval = -EPERM;
if (task->pid <= 1)
goto out;
if (same_thread_group(task, current))
goto out;

Expand Down Expand Up @@ -521,12 +519,6 @@ struct task_struct *ptrace_get_task_struct(pid_t pid)
{
struct task_struct *child;

/*
* Tracing init is not allowed.
*/
if (pid == 1)
return ERR_PTR(-EPERM);

read_lock(&tasklist_lock);
child = find_task_by_vpid(pid);
if (child)
Expand Down

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