Date:   Wed, 13 Mar 2019 10:50:48 -0700
From:   Mike Kravetz <mike.kravetz@...cle.com>
To:     Peter Xu <peterx@...hat.com>
Cc:     linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@...hat.com>,
        Hugh Dickins <hughd@...gle.com>,
        Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@...nel.org>,
        Maxime Coquelin <maxime.coquelin@...hat.com>,
        kvm@...r.kernel.org, Jerome Glisse <jglisse@...hat.com>,
        Pavel Emelyanov <xemul@...tuozzo.com>,
        Johannes Weiner <hannes@...xchg.org>,
        Martin Cracauer <cracauer@...s.org>,
        Denis Plotnikov <dplotnikov@...tuozzo.com>, linux-mm@...ck.org,
        Marty McFadden <mcfadden8@...l.gov>,
        Maya Gokhale <gokhale2@...l.gov>,
        Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@...hat.com>,
        Mike Rapoport <rppt@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
        Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>,
        Mel Gorman <mgorman@...e.de>,
        "Kirill A . Shutemov" <kirill@...temov.name>,
        linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org,
        "Dr . David Alan Gilbert" <dgilbert@...hat.com>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/3] userfaultfd: allow to forbid unprivileged users

On 3/12/19 11:00 PM, Peter Xu wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 12, 2019 at 12:59:34PM -0700, Mike Kravetz wrote:
>> On 3/11/19 2:36 AM, Peter Xu wrote:
>>>
>>> The "kvm" entry is a bit special here only to make sure that existing
>>> users like QEMU/KVM won't break by this newly introduced flag.  What
>>> we need to do is simply set the "unprivileged_userfaultfd" flag to
>>> "kvm" here to automatically grant userfaultfd permission for processes
>>> like QEMU/KVM without extra code to tweak these flags in the admin
>>> code.
>>
>> Another user is Oracle DB, specifically with hugetlbfs.  For them, we would
>> like to add a special case like kvm described above.  The admin controls
>> who can have access to hugetlbfs, so I think adding code to the open
>> routine as in patch 2 of this series would seem to work.
> 
> Yes I think if there's an explicit and safe place we can hook for
> hugetlbfs then we can do the similar trick as KVM case.  Though I
> noticed that we can not only create hugetlbfs files under the
> mountpoint (which the admin can control), but also using some other
> ways.  The question (of me... sorry if it's a silly one!) is whether
> all other ways to use hugetlbfs is still under control of the admin.
> One I know of is memfd_create() which seems to be doable even as
> unprivileged users.  If so, should we only limit the uffd privilege to
> those hugetlbfs users who use the mountpoint directly?

Wow!  I did not realize that apps which specify mmap(MAP_HUGETLB) do not
need any special privilege to use huge pages.  Honestly, I am not sure if
that was by design or a bug.  The memfd_create code is based on the MAP_HUGETLB
code and also does not need any special privilege.  Not to sidetrack this
discussion, but people on Cc may know if this is a bug or by design.  My
opinion is that huge pages are a limited resource and should be under control.
One needs to be a member of a special group (or root) to access via System V
interfaces.

The DB use case only does mmap of files in an explicitly mounted filesystem.
So, limiting it in that manner would work for them.

> Another question is about fork() of privileged processes - for KVM we
> only grant privilege for the exact process that opened the /dev/kvm
> node, and the privilege will be lost for any forked childrens.  Is
> that the same thing for OracleDB/Hugetlbfs?

I need to confirm with the DB people, but it is my understanding that the
exact process which does the open/mmap will be the one using userfaultfd.
-- 
Mike Kravetz

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