wmmemload and kfreebsd
Hello!
I'm the maintainer of wmmemload, a small Window Maker dockapp that
monitors memory and swap usage. In response to bug #764356 [1], I've
been working to make it sure it works in GNU/kFreeBSD. I recently
released a new upstream version in which, after a couple fixes [2, 3],
everything appears to work fine.
However, I'm currently in the process of packaging the new version for
Debian. In order for wmmemload to monitor the swap usage, it calls
kvm_getswapinfo(), which requires that the setgid bit of the binary be
set so that /dev/mem can be accessed. Of course, I need to exclude the
binary from dh_fixperms in order for this to happen, which results in a
Lintian warning.
Would it be okay to proceed in this direction and override this warning,
or does this pose a security risk?
I'm also wondering if a better route might be to use sysctl. This is
how wmmemload monitors the memory usage, but I wasn't able to figure out
how to also use it for swap usage. I did notice that pstat (which
doesn't appear to be included in Debian) does it this way, getting
vm.swap_info from sysctl [4]. However, "sysctl vm.swap_info" on the
command line doesn't return anything on Debian, so I don't know if it's
available.
I would greatly appreciate any advice. Thank you!
Doug Torrance
[1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=764356
[2] http://lists.windowmaker.org/dev/msg07293.html
[3] http://lists.windowmaker.org/dev/msg07294.html
[4]
https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/head/usr.sbin/pstat/pstat.c?revision=225847&view=co
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