# Re: \[PATCH v5 15/16\] ima: Move dentries into ima\_namespace

- From: Stefan Berger \<stefanb@linux.ibm.com\>
- Date: 2021-12-10 14:17:39 
- List: linux-security-module
- Page: https://ratatoskr.run/linux-security-module/2021/12/1603861
- Thread: https://ratatoskr.run/linux-integrity/2021/12/1601798/t.md

```text

On 12/10/21 08:02, Mimi Zohar wrote:
> On Fri, 2021-12-10 at 07:40 -0500, Stefan Berger wrote:
>> On 12/10/21 07:09, Mimi Zohar wrote:
>>> On Fri, 2021-12-10 at 12:49 +0100, Christian Brauner wrote:
>>>>> There's still the problem that if you write the policy, making the file
>>>>> disappear then unmount and remount securityfs it will come back.  My
>>>>> guess for fixing this is that we only stash the policy file reference,
>>>>> create it if NULL but then set the pointer to PTR_ERR(-EINVAL) or
>>>>> something and refuse to create it for that value.
>>>> Some sort of indicator that gets stashed in struct ima_ns that the file
>>>> does not get recreated on consecutive mounts. That shouldn't be hard to
>>>> fix.
>>> The policy file disappearing is for backwards compatibility, prior to
>>> being able to extend the custom policy.  For embedded usecases,
>>> allowing the policy to be written exactly once might makes sense.  Do
>>> we really want/need to continue to support removing the policy in
>>> namespaces?
>> I don't have an answer but should the behavior for the same #define in
>> this case be different for host and namespaces? Or should we just
>> 'select IMA_WRITE_POLICY and IMA_READ_POLICY' when IMA_NS is selected?
> The latter option sounds good.  Being able to analyze the namespace
> policy is really important.

Ok, I will adjust the Kconfig for this then. This then warrants the question whether to move the dentry into the ima_namespace. The current code looks like this.

#if !defined(CONFIG_IMA_WRITE_POLICY) && !defined(CONFIG_IMA_READ_POLICY)
        securityfs_remove(ns->policy_dentry);
        ns->policy_dentry = NULL;
        ns->policy_dentry_removed = true;
#elif defined(CONFIG_IMA_WRITE_POLICY)

With IMA_NS selecting IMA_WRITE_POLICY and IMA_READ_POLICY the above wouldn't be necessary anymore but I find it 'cleaner' to still have the dentry isolated rather than it being a global static as it was before...


>
> thanks,
>
> Mimi
>
```