On Mon, May 15, 2023 at 1:33 PM Christian Brauner [off-list ref] wrote:

On Thu, May 11, 2023 at 05:08:02PM +0200, Christian Göttsche wrote:

quoted

Add the four syscalls setxattrat(), getxattrat(), listxattrat() and
removexattrat().  Those can be used to operate on extended attributes,
especially security related ones, either relative to a pinned directory
or on a file descriptor without read access, avoiding a
/proc/<pid>/fd/<fd> detour, requiring a mounted procfs.

One use case will be setfiles(8) setting SELinux file contexts
("security.selinux") without race conditions.

Add XATTR flags to the private namespace of AT_* flags.

Use the do_{name}at() pattern from fs/open.c.

Use a single flag parameter for extended attribute flags (currently
XATTR_CREATE and XATTR_REPLACE) and *at() flags to not exceed six
syscall arguments in setxattrat().

Previous approach ("f*xattr: allow O_PATH descriptors"): https://lore.kernel.org/all/20220607153139.35588-1-cgzones@googlemail.com/ (local)
v1 discussion: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20220830152858.14866-2-cgzones@googlemail.com/ (local)

Signed-off-by: Christian Göttsche <redacted>
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---

Fwiw, your header doesn't let me see who the mail was directly sent to
so I'm only able to reply to lists which is a bit pointless...

quoted

v2:
  - squash syscall introduction and wire up commits
  - add AT_XATTR_CREATE and AT_XATTR_REPLACE constants

quoted

+#define AT_XATTR_CREATE              0x1     /* setxattrat(2): set value, fail if attr already exists */
+#define AT_XATTR_REPLACE     0x2     /* setxattrat(2): set value, fail if attr does not exist */

We really shouldn't waste any AT_* flags for this. Otherwise we'll run
out of them rather quickly. Two weeks ago we added another AT_* flag
which is up for merging for v6.5 iirc and I've glimpsed another AT_*
flag proposal in one of the talks at last weeks Vancouver conference
extravaganza.

Even if we reuse 0x200 for AT_XATTR_CREATE (like we did for AT_EACCESS
and AT_REMOVEDIR) we still need another bit for AT_XATTR_REPLACE.

Plus, this is really ugly since AT_XATTR_{CREATE,REPLACE} really isn't
in any way related to lookup and we're mixing it in with lookup
modifying flags.

So my proposal for {g,s}etxattrat() would be:

struct xattr_args {
        __aligned_u64 value;
        __u32 size;
        __u32 cmd;
};

So everything's nicely 64bit aligned in the struct. Use the @cmd member
to set either XATTR_REPLACE or XATTR_CREATE and treat it as a proper
enum and not as a flag argument like the old calls did.

So then we'd have:

setxattrat(int dfd, const char *path, const char __user *name,
           struct xattr_args __user *args, size_t size, unsigned int flags)
getxattrat(int dfd, const char *path, const char __user *name,
           struct xattr_args __user *args, size_t size, unsigned int flags)

The current in-kernel struct xattr_ctx would be renamed to struct
kernel_xattr_args and then we do the usual copy_struct_from_user()
dance:

struct xattr_args args;
err = copy_struct_from_user(&args, sizeof(args), uargs, usize);

and then go on to handle value/size for setxattrat()/getxattrat()
accordingly.

getxattr()/setxattr() aren't meaningfully filterable by seccomp already
so there's not point in not using a struct.

If that isn't very appealing then another option is to add a new flag
namespace just for setxattrat() similar to fspick() and move_mount()
duplicating the needed lookup modifying flags.
Thoughts?

Here is a thought: I am not sure if I am sorry we did not discuss this API
issue in LSFMM or happy that we did not waste our time on this... :-/

I must say that I dislike redefined flag namespace like FSPICK_*
just as much as I dislike overloading the AT_* namespace and TBH,
I am not crazy about avoiding this problem with xattr_args either.

A more sane solution IMO could have been:
- Use lower word of flags for generic AT_ flags
- Use the upper word of flags for syscall specific flags

So if it were up to me, I would vote starting this practice:

+ /* Start of syscall specific range */
+ #define AT_XATTR_CREATE       0x10000     /* setxattrat(2): set
value, fail if attr already exists */
+ #define AT_XATTR_REPLACE     0x20000     /* setxattrat(2): set
value, fail if attr does not exist */

Which coincidentally happens to be inline with my AT_HANDLE_FID patch...

Sure, we will have some special cases like MOVE_MOUNT_* and
legacy pollution to the lower AT_ flags word, but as a generic solution
for syscalls that need the common AT_ lookup flags and just a few
private flags, that seems like the lesser evil to me.

Thanks,
Amir.