linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] [RFC] mnt: restrict a number of "struct mnt"

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Date:	Thu, 20 Jun 2013 18:04:28 -0700
From:	ebiederm@...ssion.com (Eric W. Biederman)
To:	Andrey Wagin <avagin@...il.com>
Cc:	Alexander Viro <viro@...iv.linux.org.uk>,
	linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org, LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	"Serge E. Hallyn" <serge@...lyn.com>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org>,
	Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>,
	Mel Gorman <mgorman@...e.de>, Rik van Riel <riel@...hat.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] [RFC] mnt: restrict a number of "struct mnt"

Andrey Wagin <avagin@...il.com> writes:

> On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 02:56:51AM +0400, Andrey Wagin wrote:
>> 2013/6/17 Eric W. Biederman <ebiederm@...ssion.com>:
>> > So for anyone seriously worried about this kind of thing in general we
>> > already have the memory control group, which is quite capable of
>> > limiting this kind of thing,
>> 
>> > and it limits all memory allocations not just mount.
>> 
>> And that is problem, we can't to limit a particular slab. Let's
>> imagine a real container with 4Gb of RAM. What is a kernel memory
>> limit resonable for it? I setup 64 Mb (it may be not enough for real
>> CT, but it's enough to make host inaccessible for some minutes).
>> 
>> $ mkdir /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/test
>> $ echo $((64 << 20)) > /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/test/memory.kmem.limit_in_bytes
>> $ unshare -m
>> $ echo $$ > /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/test/tasks
>> $ mount --make-rprivate /
>> $ mount -t tmpfs xxx /mnt
>> $ mount --make-shared /mnt
>> $ time bash -c 'set -m; for i in `seq 30`; do mount --bind /mnt
>> `mktemp -d /mnt/test.XXXXXX` & done;  for i in `seq 30`; do wait;
>> done'
>> real 0m23.141s
>> user 0m0.016s
>> sys 0m22.881s
>> 
>> While the last script is working, nobody can't to read /proc/mounts or
>> mount something. I don't think that users from other containers will
>> be glad. This problem is not so significant in compared with umounting
>> of this tree.
>> 
>> $ strace -T umount -l /mnt
>> umount("/mnt", MNT_DETACH)              = 0 <548.898244>
>> The host is inaccessible, it writes messages about soft lockup in
>> kernel log and eats 100% cpu.
>
> Eric, do you agree that
> * It is a problem
> * Currently we don't have a mechanism to prevent this problem
> * We need to find a way to prevent this problem

Ugh.  I knew mount propagation was annoying semantically but I had not
realized the implementation was quite so bad.

This doesn't happen in normal operation to normal folks.  So I don't
think this is something we need to rush in a fix at the last moment to
prevent the entire world from melting down.  Even people using mount
namespaces in containers.

I do think it is worth looking at.  Which kernel were you testing?.  I
haven't gotten as far as looking too closely but I just noticed that Al
Viro has been busy rewriting the lock of this.  So if you aren't testing
at least 2.10-rcX you probably need to retest.

My thoughts would be.  Improve the locking as much as possible,
and if that is not enough keep a measure of how many mounts will be
affected at least for the umount.  Possibly for the umount -l case.
Then just don't allow the complexity to exceed some limit so we know
things will happen in a timely manner.

Eric
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