Message-ID: <20070409170743.GF24415@sergelap.austin.ibm.com>
Date:	Mon, 9 Apr 2007 12:07:43 -0500
From:	"Serge E. Hallyn" <serue@...ibm.com>
To:	Miklos Szeredi <miklos@...redi.hu>
Cc:	serue@...ibm.com, akpm@...ux-foundation.org,
	linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org, containers@...ts.osdl.org,
	util-linux-ng@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	Ram Pai <linuxram@...ibm.com>
Subject: Re: [patch 0/8] unprivileged mount syscall

Quoting Miklos Szeredi (miklos@...redi.hu):
> > > > > One thing that is missing from this series is the ability to restrict
> > > > > user mounts to private namespaces.  The reason is that private
> > > > > namespaces have still not gained the momentum and support needed for
> > > > > painless user experience.  So such a feature would not yet get enough
> > > > > attention and testing.  However adding such an optional restriction
> > > > > can be done with minimal changes in the future, once private
> > > > > namespaces have matured.
> > > > 
> > > > I suspect the people who developed and maintain nsproxy would disagree ;)
> > > 
> > > Well, they better show me some working and simple-to-use userspace
> > > code, because I've not seen anything like that related to mount
> > > namespaces.
> > 
> > If you mean to test/exploit them, see
> > http://lxc.sourceforge.net/patches/2.6.20/2.6.20-lxc8/broken-out/tests/
> > 
> > Compile the ns_exec.c program and do
> > 
> > 	ns_exec -m /bin/sh
> > 
> > to get a shell in a new mounts namespace.
> 
> Cool, thanks.  This is a very nice utility for testing, but for the
> end user rather useless:

Well that depends on which end-user.  Those wanting to create a vserver
or checkpoint-restart job will want this, but clearly we have a long way
to go for that upstream anyway.

>   - user starts up a private namespace in a shell, mounts something
> 
>   - then opens app from menu, tries to access mount, but the mount is
>     not there
> 
>   - user unhappy
> 
> BTW, looking at -mm unshare() on namespace is not privileged any more.
> Why is that?  Or rather, what's the reason, that clone() is privileged
> and unshare() is not?

The check is still there - see kernel/nsproxy.c:unshare_nsproxy_namespaces().

> > > pam_namespace.so is one example of a non-working, but probably-not-too-
> > > hard-to-fix one.
> > 
> > Non-working?  I sure hope the one used for LSPP certification is
> > working...  As is the ugly version I wrote 18 mounts ago and use on my
> > laptop.
> 
> The one in pam-0.99.6.3-29.1 in opensuse-10.2 is totally broken.  Are
> you interested in the details?  I can reproduce it, but forgot to note
> down the details of the brokenness.

I don't know how far removed that is from the one being used by redhat,
but assuming it's the same, then redhat-lspp@...hat.com will be
very interested.

> > > I'm just saying this is not yet something that Joe Blow would just
> > > enable by ticking a box in their desktop setup wizard, and it would
> > > all work flawlessly thereafter.  There's still a _long_ way towards
> > > that, and mostly in userspace.
> > 
> > I'm not sure there's a that long a way to go, but clearly we need to be
> > showing users what they can do, or they'll never work their way towards
> > there.
> 
> There _is_ a long way to go.  Random things that spring to my mind:
> 
>  - using /etc/mtab is broken with private namespaces, using
>    /proc/mounts is missing various functionality, that /etc/mtab has,
>    for example the "user" option, which this patchset adds

Agreed those need fixing.

>  - need to set up mount propagation from global namespace to private
>    ones, mount(8) does not yet have options to configure propagation

Hmm, I guess I get lost using my own little systems, and just assumed
that shared subtree functionality was making its way up into mount(8).
Ram, have you been working on that?

>  - user namespace setup: what if user has multiple sessions?
> 
>    1) namespaces are shared?  That's tricky because the session needs to
>    be a child of a namespace server, not of login.  I'm not sure PAM
>    can handle this
> 
>    2) or mounts are copied on login?  That's not possible currently,
>    as there's no way to send a mount between namespaces.  Also it's
>    tricky to make sure that new mounts are also shared

See toward the end of the 'shared subtrees' OLS paper from last year for
a suggestion on how to let users effectively 'log in to' an existing
private mounts ns.

> > For instance, as you say, a user admin gui with a checkmark and text
> > boxes saying 'enter new namespace on login', 'create private /tmp',
> > and 'create private dmcrypted /home' would be trivial right now.
> 
> Trivial modulo the above slightly non-trivial exemptions ;)

Ok, so it can use some very non-trivial fine-tuning...

But I've been using the above - minus the trivial gui - for over a year
without ever worrying about any of these short-comings.

> Miklos

-serge
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