[RFC] Making D-Bus suitable for being run early during boot

[David Zeuthen]

Hi,

On Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 11:28 AM, Colin Walters <walters at verbum.org> wrote:
>> b) The system bus should become an abstract namespace socket by
>>   default. This would require changing of the spec.
>
> This is a pretty incompatible change.

I think client libraries are supposed to honor the
DBUS_SYSTEM_BUS_ADDRESS environment variable. So presumably we could
just ensure that it's always set. But that won't work anyway, because
security-sensitive setuid software (such as pkexec(1)) of course
clears that environment variable to avoid getting fooled (presumably
the hostile caller could arrange for a system bus with fake services
that is running at an address of his choice). So yeah, the change is
incompatible. And then there's the other problem with abstract
namespaces I mentioned in the other mail.

Lennart, why exactly do want or need the socket to be abstract? Also
note that abstract socket is a Linux-only thing so mandating it in the
spec kinda makes D-Bus a Linux-only thing. I'm not sure we want that.

    David