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      <base href="https://bugs.freedesktop.org/" />
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    <body><table border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="8">
        <tr>
          <th>Priority</th>
          <td>medium
          </td>
        </tr>

        <tr>
          <th>Bug ID</th>
          <td><a class="bz_bug_link 
          bz_status_NEW "
   title="NEW --- - pulseaudio's use of sys/capability.h is non-POSIX"
   href="https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=72580">72580</a>
          </td>
        </tr>

        <tr>
          <th>CC</th>
          <td>lennart@poettering.net
          </td>
        </tr>

        <tr>
          <th>Assignee</th>
          <td>pulseaudio-bugs@lists.freedesktop.org
          </td>
        </tr>

        <tr>
          <th>Summary</th>
          <td>pulseaudio's use of sys/capability.h is non-POSIX
          </td>
        </tr>

        <tr>
          <th>QA Contact</th>
          <td>pulseaudio-bugs@lists.freedesktop.org
          </td>
        </tr>

        <tr>
          <th>Severity</th>
          <td>normal
          </td>
        </tr>

        <tr>
          <th>Classification</th>
          <td>Unclassified
          </td>
        </tr>

        <tr>
          <th>OS</th>
          <td>All
          </td>
        </tr>

        <tr>
          <th>Reporter</th>
          <td>desrt@desrt.ca
          </td>
        </tr>

        <tr>
          <th>Hardware</th>
          <td>Other
          </td>
        </tr>

        <tr>
          <th>Status</th>
          <td>NEW
          </td>
        </tr>

        <tr>
          <th>Version</th>
          <td>unspecified
          </td>
        </tr>

        <tr>
          <th>Component</th>
          <td>daemon
          </td>
        </tr>

        <tr>
          <th>Product</th>
          <td>PulseAudio
          </td>
        </tr></table>
      <p>
        <div>
        <pre>The configure script for pulseaudio has this:

CAP_LIBS=''

AC_ARG_WITH([caps],
    AS_HELP_STRING([--without-caps],[Omit support for POSIX capabilities.]))

if test "x${with_caps}" != "xno"; then
    AC_SEARCH_LIBS([cap_init], [cap], [], [
                    if test "x${with_caps}" = "xyes" ; then
                        AC_MSG_ERROR([*** POSIX caps libraries not found])
                    fi])
    AC_CHECK_HEADERS([sys/capability.h], [], [
                    if test "x${with_caps}" = "xyes" ; then
                        AC_MSG_ERROR([*** POSIX caps headers not found])
                    fi])
fi

Then in the daemon's source:

void pa_drop_caps(void) {
#ifdef HAVE_SYS_CAPABILITY_H
    cap_t caps;
    pa_assert_se(caps = cap_init());
    pa_assert_se(cap_clear(caps) == 0);
    pa_assert_se(cap_set_proc(caps) == 0);
    pa_assert_se(cap_free(caps) == 0);
#else
    pa_log_warn("Normally all extra capabilities would be dropped now, but "
                "that's impossible because this Pulseaudio was built without "
                "libcap support.");
#endif
}



POSIX does not specify what such a file should contain -- the attempt to
standardise it seems to have failed, as evidenced by the comment at the top of
Linux's version of this file:

 * defunct POSIX.1e Standard: 25.2 Capabilities

Meanwhile, the combination of the two checks above produces the wrong
behaviour.

Imagine a system where sys/capability.h exists, but not cap_init (FreeBSD is
such a system, for example).

The first check fails due to missing cap_init, but because --with-caps=yes was
not explicitly given, the failure is ignored.

The second check, which is independent of the first check then passes, because
we do find sys/capability.h.  This results in HAVE_SYS_CAPABILITY_H being
defined, and then the caps code gets enabled in pa_drop_caps().

Inside the #ifdef for HAVE_SYS_CAPABILITY_H there should probably also be an
#ifdef __linux before using that Linux-style capabilities code.  There could
then ideally be another branch for BSD-style sys/capability.h.</pre>
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