Re: [PATCHv4 RESEND 0/3] syscalls,x86: Add execveat() system call

Andy Lutomirski [off-list ref] writes:

On Mon, Oct 20, 2014 at 6:48 AM, David Drysdale [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

On Sun, Oct 19, 2014 at 1:20 AM, Eric W. Biederman
[off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

Andy Lutomirski [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

[Added Eric Biederman, since I think your tree might be a reasonable
route forward for these patches.]

On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 6:40 AM, David Drysdale [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

Resending, adding cc:linux-api.

Also, it may help to add a little more background -- this patch is
needed as a (small) part of implementing Capsicum in the Linux kernel.

Capsicum is a security framework that has been present in FreeBSD since
version 9.0 (Jan 2012), and is based on concepts from object-capability
security [1].

One of the features of Capsicum is capability mode, which locks down
access to global namespaces such as the filesystem hierarchy.  In
capability mode, /proc is thus inaccessible and so fexecve(3) doesn't
work -- hence the need for a kernel-space

I just found myself wanting this syscall for another reason: injecting
programs into sandboxes or otherwise heavily locked-down namespaces.

For example, I want to be able to reliably do something like nsenter
--namespace-flags-here toybox sh.  Toybox's shell is unusual in that
it is more or less fully functional, so this should Just Work (tm),
except that the toybox binary might not exist in the namespace being
entered.  If execveat were available, I could rig nsenter or a similar
tool to open it with O_CLOEXEC, enter the namespace, and then call
execveat.

Is there any reason that these patches can't be merged more or less as
is for 3.19?

Yes.  There is a silliness in how it implements fexecve.  The fexecve
case should be use the empty string "" not a NULL pointer to indication
that.  That change will then harmonize execveat with the other ...at
system calls and simplify the code and remove a special case.  I believe
using the empty string "" requires implementing the AT_EMPTY_PATH flag.

Good point -- I'll shift to "" + AT_EMPTY_PATH.

Pending a better idea, I would also see if the patches can be changed
to return an error if d_path ends up with an "(unreachable)" thing
rather than failing inexplicably later on.

For my reference we are talking about  

The interesting case for fexecve is when we either don't know what files
are present or we don't want to depend on which files are present.

As Al pointed out d_path really isn't the right solution.  It fails when
printing /proc/self/fd/${fd}/${filename->name} would work, and the
"(deleted)" or "(unreachable)" strings are wrong.

The test for today's cases should be:
if ((filename->name[0] == '/') || fd == AT_FDCWD) {
	bprm->filename = filename->name;
} 

To handle the case where the file descriptor is relevant.

For the case where the file descriptor is relevant let me suggest
setting bprm->filename and bprm->interp to:

/dev/fd/${fd}/${filename->name}

It is more a description of what we have done but as a magic string it
is descriptive.  Documetation/devices.txt documents that /dev/fd/ should
exist, making it an unambiguous path.  Further these days the kernel
sets the device naming policy in dev, so I think we are strongly safe in
using that path in any event.

I think execveat is interesting in the kernel because the motivating
cases are the cases where anything except a static executable is
uninteresting.

Now it has been suggested creating a dupfs or a mini-proc.  I think that
sounds like a nice companion, to the concept of a locked down root.
But I don't think it removes the need for execveat (because we still
have the case where we don't want to care what is mounted, and are happy
to use static executables). 

Eric