(Mis)using threads

[Mikko Rauhala]

(Sorry for thread breakage, I'm not actually subscribed but commenting
based on the archive.)

On Thu Mar 13 2003, 02:11:50 CST Ove Kaaven wrote:
> Yes, they all support what I'm saying: a non-root process cannot
> increase its scheduling priority (in the common meaning of "priority",
> not the inversed sense that renice and setpriority use, of course, if
> that wasn't obvious).

Actually, at least Linux has some capability support, and if the Wine process
would by some means be set up to receive CAP_SYS_NICE, it could manipulate
priorities at will. Unfortunately, I don't think eg. the capability filesystem
support is at place currently, so this might take some tweaking. (I'm not sure
if eg. a suid root wrapper that would just exec wine with normal user
priviledges and give it CAP_SYS_NICE would work.) This solution also
is obviously limited to systems supporting CAP_SYS_NICE.

Another alternative would be to make a suitably authorized (root or CAP_SYS_NICE)
priority switching server, which could respond to spesifically authorized
priority switch requests. A bit of a kludge, yes.

Of course, any solution that gives user processes access to setpriority() is
potentially dangerous, but at least the dangers would be limited, unlike
with running Wine as root.

-- 
Mikko Rauhala   - mjr at iki.fi     - <URL:http://www.iki.fi/mjr/>
Transhumanist   - WTA member     - <URL:http://www.transhumanism.org/>
Singularitarian - SIAI supporter - <URL:http://www.singinst.org/>

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