printk: add kernel parameter to control writes to /dev/kmsg
authorBorislav Petkov <bp@suse.de>
Tue, 2 Aug 2016 21:04:07 +0000 (14:04 -0700)
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Tue, 2 Aug 2016 23:35:06 +0000 (19:35 -0400)
commit750afe7babd117daabebf4855da18e4418ea845e
tree21aaf3748d3afd3e880b6ef301128c5567a15956
parent6b1d174b0c27b5de421eda55c2731f32b6bd9852
printk: add kernel parameter to control writes to /dev/kmsg

Add a "printk.devkmsg" kernel command line parameter which controls how
userspace writes into /dev/kmsg.  It has three options:

 * ratelimit - ratelimit logging from userspace.
 * on  - unlimited logging from userspace
 * off - logging from userspace gets ignored

The default setting is to ratelimit the messages written to it.

This changes the kernel default setting of "on" to "ratelimit" and we do
that because we want to keep userspace spamming /dev/kmsg to sane
levels.  This is especially moot when a small kernel log buffer wraps
around and messages get lost.  So the ratelimiting setting should be a
sane setting where kernel messages should have a bit higher chance of
survival from all the spamming.

It additionally does not limit logging to /dev/kmsg while the system is
booting if we haven't disabled it on the command line.

Furthermore, we can control the logging from a lower priority sysctl
interface - kernel.printk_devkmsg.

That interface will succeed only if printk.devkmsg *hasn't* been
supplied on the command line.  If it has, then printk.devkmsg is a
one-time setting which remains for the duration of the system lifetime.
This "locking" of the setting is to prevent userspace from changing the
logging on us through sysctl(2).

This patch is based on previous patches from Linus and Steven.

[bp@suse.de: fixes]
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20160719072344.GC25563@nazgul.tnic
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20160716061745.15795-3-bp@alien8.de
Signed-off-by: Borislav Petkov <bp@suse.de>
Cc: Dave Young <dyoung@redhat.com>
Cc: Franck Bui <fbui@suse.com>
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
Cc: Uwe Kleine-König <u.kleine-koenig@pengutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
Documentation/sysctl/kernel.txt
include/linux/printk.h
kernel/printk/printk.c
kernel/sysctl.c