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Credit where credit is due: this idea comes from Christoph Lameter with
a lot of valuable input from Serge Hallyn.  This patch is heavily based
on Christoph's patch.

===== The status quo =====

On Linux, there are a number of capabilities defined by the kernel.  To
perform various privileged tasks, processes can wield capabilities that
they hold.

Each task has four capability masks: effective (pE), permitted (pP),
inheritable (pI), and a bounding set (X).  When the kernel checks for a
capability, it checks pE.  The other capability masks serve to modify
what capabilities can be in pE.

Any task can remove capabilities from pE, pP, or pI at any time.  If a
task has a capability in pP, it can add that capability to pE and/or pI.
If a task has CAP_SETPCAP, then it can add any capability to pI, and it
can remove capabilities from X.

Tasks are not the only things that can have capabilities; files can also
have capabilities.  A file can have no capabilty information at all ...