[clug] PlasticFS: anyone used/using this?

[Michael Cohen]

Hi Steve,

On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 7:33 AM, steve jenkin <sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au> wrote:
> Anyone used/using Peter Millers' "PlasticFS"??
> <http://miller.emu.id.au/pmiller/software/>
> <http://plasticfs.sourceforge.net/>

  Be aware that LD_PRELOAD can not be used for security sensitive
applications as it simply hooks libc. Its a bit concerning that the
above link mentions a chroot filter - This can not substitute a chroot
environment since a process may alway make system calls directly
without using libc.

I have played with LD_PRELOAD hook before for doing various things but
found the mechanism to be less than reliable - especially systems like
RHEL do very strange things with system calls (e.g. open() calls are
routed to various versions like open64() in an inconsistent way to
other distributions). I suppose if the author did extensive testing
this should not be a problem but it just because really fiddly in the
end.

This approach is probably best used on systems which do not have a
decent userspace filesystem implementation - for linux etc fuse is
very easy to use and reliable.

Not having tested the project specifically I can not comment about it
- but LD_PRELOAD techniques have some limitations.

Michael.