Comment by smartmic

Comment by smartmic 4 days ago

17 replies

I am puzzled by this:

> A official c library doesn’t exist yet unfortunately, but there’s several out there you can try.

> Landlock is a Linux Security Module (LSM) available since Linux 5.13

Since when is not a C API the first and foremost interface for developers when it comes to Linux kernel stuff?

muvlon 4 days ago

The first and foremost interface of the kernel is the syscall interface aka the uapi. libc and other C libraries like liburing or libcap are downstream of that. Many syscalls still don't have wrappers in libc after years of use.

  • samus 4 days ago

    Yet for many syscalls there is an official library - in most cases a wrapper in libc, but especially io_uring is known to provide a C library that most applications ought to use instead of the raw syscalls.

  • smartmic 4 days ago

    Thanks for clarification! I meant more, why isn't there a C API first, but Rust, Haskell, and Go before that — that's kind of surprising or new to me.

    • wging 4 days ago

      I read the article as saying that there's no official C library but unofficial ones do exist. Quote below, emphasis mine.

      > A official c library doesn’t exist yet unfortunately, but there’s several out there you can try.

      Also, it looks like there is more than zero support for C programs calling Landlock APIs. Even without a 3rd-party library you're not just calling syscall() with a magic number:

      https://docs.kernel.org/userspace-api/landlock.html

      https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/6bda50f4/include/uapi...

      https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/6bda50f4/include/linu...

    • WJW 4 days ago

      I don't understand what you mean. There's no "official" Rust, Haskell and Go APIs for this thing either. All libraries available seem to be just what some third party made available. There's also several C libraries, just none that have been officially endorsed by the Linux kernel team.

    • nine_k 4 days ago

      Go is famous for not needing libc and talking to the kernel. Rust and Haskell have communities that are very interested in safety and security, so they are earlier adopters.

      For C, unofficial support apparently sufficed for now.

eikenberry 17 hours ago

Because C is not the primary interface language for kernel syscalls. There is no language specific primary interface as the syscall is the primary interface and it is language agnostic. This is one of Linux's great strengths, a stable syscall API that doesn't rely on a system library.

wyldfire 4 days ago

It's pretty subtle but it's referring to The C Library, libc.{a,so,dll,etc}. The library provided by your toolchain that supports the language.

Meaning glibc or musl or your favorite C library probably doesn't have this yet, but since the system calls are well defined you can use A C library (create your own header file using the _syscallN macro for example).

Levitating 4 days ago

> Since when is not a C API the first and foremost interface for developers when it comes to Linux kernel stuff?

Since the kernel developers don't make userland software?

jeroenhd 4 days ago

The lack of a C API should not stop any C developers from using it, hopefully. The wrapper libraries are relatively simple (i.e. https://codeberg.org/git-bruh/landbox) and both Rust and Go can expose a C FFI in case developers would rather link against a more "official" library instead.

The Linux kernel has a relatively simple example on how to use the syscall even if you can't find a library to deal with it for you: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...

There is no "liblandlock" or whatever, though there totally could be. The only reason Rust, Go, and Haskell have an easy-to-use API for this syscall is because someone bothered to implement a wrapper and publish it to the usual package managers. Whatever procedure distros use to add new libraries could just as easily be used to push a landlock library/header to use it in C.