For more information on securebits, see the capabilities.7 manpage, specifically the section entitled The "securebits" flags: establishing a capabilities-only environment To run these tests there are no kernel configuration requirements, but your kernel must be at least Linux 2.6.32-rc7, and you must have a /usr/include/linux/securebits.h which defines SECBIT_NOROOT. You also need the libcap v2 development libraries installed.