Message-Id: <20250724-procfs-pidns-api-v3-2-4c685c910923@cyphar.com>
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2025 18:32:04 +1000
From: Aleksa Sarai <cyphar@...har.com>
To: Alexander Viro <viro@...iv.linux.org.uk>, 
 Christian Brauner <brauner@...nel.org>, Jan Kara <jack@...e.cz>, 
 Jonathan Corbet <corbet@....net>, Shuah Khan <shuah@...nel.org>
Cc: Andy Lutomirski <luto@...capital.net>, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, 
 linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org, linux-api@...r.kernel.org, 
 linux-doc@...r.kernel.org, linux-kselftest@...r.kernel.org, 
 Aleksa Sarai <cyphar@...har.com>
Subject: [PATCH v3 2/4] procfs: add "pidns" mount option

Since the introduction of pid namespaces, their interaction with procfs
has been entirely implicit in ways that require a lot of dancing around
by programs that need to construct sandboxes with different PID
namespaces.

Being able to explicitly specify the pid namespace to use when
constructing a procfs super block will allow programs to no longer need
to fork off a process which does then does unshare(2) / setns(2) and
forks again in order to construct a procfs in a pidns.

So, provide a "pidns" mount option which allows such users to just
explicitly state which pid namespace they want that procfs instance to
use. This interface can be used with fsconfig(2) either with a file
descriptor or a path:

  fsconfig(procfd, FSCONFIG_SET_FD, "pidns", NULL, nsfd);
  fsconfig(procfd, FSCONFIG_SET_STRING, "pidns", "/proc/self/ns/pid", 0);

or with classic mount(2) / mount(8):

  // mount -t proc -o pidns=/proc/self/ns/pid proc /tmp/proc
  mount("proc", "/tmp/proc", "proc", MS_..., "pidns=/proc/self/ns/pid");

As this new API is effectively shorthand for setns(2) followed by
mount(2), the permission model for this mirrors pidns_install() to avoid
opening up new attack surfaces by loosening the existing permission
model.

In order to avoid having to RCU-protect all users of proc_pid_ns() (to
avoid UAFs), attempting to reconfigure an existing procfs instance's pid
namespace will error out with -EBUSY. Creating new procfs instances is
quite cheap, so this should not be an impediment to most users, and lets
us avoid a lot of churn in fs/proc/* for a feature that it seems
unlikely userspace would use.

Signed-off-by: Aleksa Sarai <cyphar@...har.com>
---
 Documentation/filesystems/proc.rst |   8 +++
 fs/proc/root.c                     | 102 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++---
 2 files changed, 104 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/proc.rst b/Documentation/filesystems/proc.rst
index 5236cb52e357..5a157dadea0b 100644
--- a/Documentation/filesystems/proc.rst
+++ b/Documentation/filesystems/proc.rst
@@ -2360,6 +2360,7 @@ The following mount options are supported:
 	hidepid=	Set /proc/<pid>/ access mode.
 	gid=		Set the group authorized to learn processes information.
 	subset=		Show only the specified subset of procfs.
+	pidns=		Specify a the namespace used by this procfs.
 	=========	========================================================
 
 hidepid=off or hidepid=0 means classic mode - everybody may access all
@@ -2392,6 +2393,13 @@ information about processes information, just add identd to this group.
 subset=pid hides all top level files and directories in the procfs that
 are not related to tasks.
 
+pidns= specifies a pid namespace (either as a string path to something like
+`/proc/$pid/ns/pid`, or a file descriptor when using `FSCONFIG_SET_FD`) that
+will be used by the procfs instance when translating pids. By default, procfs
+will use the calling process's active pid namespace. Note that the pid
+namespace of an existing procfs instance cannot be modified (attempting to do
+so will give an `-EBUSY` error).
+
 Chapter 5: Filesystem behavior
 ==============================
 
diff --git a/fs/proc/root.c b/fs/proc/root.c
index ed86ac710384..22f8b10f6265 100644
--- a/fs/proc/root.c
+++ b/fs/proc/root.c
@@ -38,12 +38,18 @@ enum proc_param {
 	Opt_gid,
 	Opt_hidepid,
 	Opt_subset,
+#ifdef CONFIG_PID_NS
+	Opt_pidns,
+#endif
 };
 
 static const struct fs_parameter_spec proc_fs_parameters[] = {
-	fsparam_u32("gid",	Opt_gid),
+	fsparam_u32("gid",		Opt_gid),
 	fsparam_string("hidepid",	Opt_hidepid),
 	fsparam_string("subset",	Opt_subset),
+#ifdef CONFIG_PID_NS
+	fsparam_file_or_string("pidns",	Opt_pidns),
+#endif
 	{}
 };
 
@@ -109,11 +115,67 @@ static int proc_parse_subset_param(struct fs_context *fc, char *value)
 	return 0;
 }
 
+#ifdef CONFIG_PID_NS
+static int proc_parse_pidns_param(struct fs_context *fc,
+				  struct fs_parameter *param,
+				  struct fs_parse_result *result)
+{
+	struct proc_fs_context *ctx = fc->fs_private;
+	struct pid_namespace *target, *active = task_active_pid_ns(current);
+	struct ns_common *ns;
+	struct file *ns_filp __free(fput) = NULL;
+
+	switch (param->type) {
+	case fs_value_is_file:
+		/* came throug fsconfig, steal the file reference */
+		ns_filp = param->file;
+		param->file = NULL;
+		break;
+	case fs_value_is_string:
+		ns_filp = filp_open(param->string, O_RDONLY, 0);
+		break;
+	default:
+		WARN_ON_ONCE(true);
+		break;
+	}
+	if (!ns_filp)
+		ns_filp = ERR_PTR(-EBADF);
+	if (IS_ERR(ns_filp)) {
+		errorfc(fc, "could not get file from pidns argument");
+		return PTR_ERR(ns_filp);
+	}
+
+	if (!proc_ns_file(ns_filp))
+		return invalfc(fc, "pidns argument is not an nsfs file");
+	ns = get_proc_ns(file_inode(ns_filp));
+	if (ns->ops->type != CLONE_NEWPID)
+		return invalfc(fc, "pidns argument is not a pidns file");
+	target = container_of(ns, struct pid_namespace, ns);
+
+	/*
+	 * pidns= is shorthand for joining the pidns to get a fsopen fd, so the
+	 * permission model should be the same as pidns_install().
+	 */
+	if (!ns_capable(target->user_ns, CAP_SYS_ADMIN)) {
+		errorfc(fc, "insufficient permissions to set pidns");
+		return -EPERM;
+	}
+	if (!pidns_is_ancestor(target, active))
+		return invalfc(fc, "cannot set pidns to non-descendant pidns");
+
+	put_pid_ns(ctx->pid_ns);
+	ctx->pid_ns = get_pid_ns(target);
+	put_user_ns(fc->user_ns);
+	fc->user_ns = get_user_ns(ctx->pid_ns->user_ns);
+	return 0;
+}
+#endif /* CONFIG_PID_NS */
+
 static int proc_parse_param(struct fs_context *fc, struct fs_parameter *param)
 {
 	struct proc_fs_context *ctx = fc->fs_private;
 	struct fs_parse_result result;
-	int opt;
+	int opt, err;
 
 	opt = fs_parse(fc, proc_fs_parameters, param, &result);
 	if (opt < 0)
@@ -125,15 +187,36 @@ static int proc_parse_param(struct fs_context *fc, struct fs_parameter *param)
 		break;
 
 	case Opt_hidepid:
-		if (proc_parse_hidepid_param(fc, param))
-			return -EINVAL;
+		err = proc_parse_hidepid_param(fc, param);
+		if (err)
+			return err;
 		break;
 
 	case Opt_subset:
-		if (proc_parse_subset_param(fc, param->string) < 0)
-			return -EINVAL;
+		err = proc_parse_subset_param(fc, param->string);
+		if (err)
+			return err;
 		break;
 
+#ifdef CONFIG_PID_NS
+	case Opt_pidns:
+		/*
+		 * We would have to RCU-protect every proc_pid_ns() or
+		 * proc_sb_info() access if we allowed this to be reconfigured
+		 * for an existing procfs instance. Luckily, procfs instances
+		 * are cheap to create, and mount-beneath would let you
+		 * atomically replace an instance even with overmounts.
+		 */
+		if (fc->purpose == FS_CONTEXT_FOR_RECONFIGURE) {
+			errorfc(fc, "cannot reconfigure pidns for existing procfs");
+			return -EBUSY;
+		}
+		err = proc_parse_pidns_param(fc, param, &result);
+		if (err)
+			return err;
+		break;
+#endif
+
 	default:
 		return -EINVAL;
 	}
@@ -154,6 +237,13 @@ static void proc_apply_options(struct proc_fs_info *fs_info,
 		fs_info->hide_pid = ctx->hidepid;
 	if (ctx->mask & (1 << Opt_subset))
 		fs_info->pidonly = ctx->pidonly;
+#ifdef CONFIG_PID_NS
+	if (ctx->mask & (1 << Opt_pidns) &&
+	    !WARN_ON_ONCE(fc->purpose == FS_CONTEXT_FOR_RECONFIGURE)) {
+		put_pid_ns(fs_info->pid_ns);
+		fs_info->pid_ns = get_pid_ns(ctx->pid_ns);
+	}
+#endif
 }
 
 static int proc_fill_super(struct super_block *s, struct fs_context *fc)

-- 
2.50.0

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