On Mon, Apr 27, 2020 at 8:15 PM Christian Brauner <christian.brauner@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Mon, Apr 27, 2020 at 07:28:56PM +0200, Jann Horn wrote: > > On Mon, Apr 27, 2020 at 4:47 PM Christian Brauner > > <christian.brauner@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: [...] > > > That means > > > setns(nsfd, CLONE_NEWNET) equals setns(pidfd, CLONE_NEWNET). However, > > > when a pidfd is passed, multiple namespace flags can be specified in the > > > second setns() argument and setns() will attach the caller to all the > > > specified namespaces all at once or to none of them. If 0 is specified > > > together with a pidfd then setns() will interpret it the same way 0 is > > > interpreted together with a nsfd argument, i.e. attach to any/all > > > namespaces. > > [...] > > > Apart from significiantly reducing the number of syscalls from double > > > digit to single digit which is a decent reason post-spectre/meltdown > > > this also allows to switch to a set of namespaces atomically, i.e. > > > either attaching to all the specified namespaces succeeds or we fail. > > > > Apart from the issues I've pointed out below, I think it's worth > > calling out explicitly that with the current design, the switch will > > not, in fact, be fully atomic - the process will temporarily be in > > intermediate stages where the switches to some namespaces have > > completed while the switches to other namespaces are still pending; > > and while there will be less of these intermediate stages than before, > > it also means that they will be less explicit to userspace. > > Right, that can be fixed by switching to the unshare model of getting a > new set of credentials and committing it after the nsproxy has been > installed? Then there shouldn't be an intermediate state anymore or > rather an intermediate stage where we can still fail somehow. It still wouldn't be atomic (in the sense of parallelism, not in the sense of intermediate error handling) though; for example, if task B does setns(<pidfd_of_task_a>, 0) and task C concurrently does setns(<pidfd_of_task_b>, 0), then task C may end up with the new mount namespace of task B but the old user namespace, or something like that. If C is more privileged than B, that may cause C to have more privileges through its configuration of namespaces than B does (e.g. by running in the &init_user_ns but with a mount namespace owned by an unprivileged user), which C may not expect. Same thing for racing between unshare() and setns(). [...] > > > + put_user_ns(user_ns); > > > + } > > > +#else > > > + if (flags & CLONE_NEWUSER) > > > + ret = -EINVAL; > > > +#endif > > > + > > > + if (!ret && wants_ns(flags, CLONE_NEWNS)) > > > + ret = __ns_install(nsproxy, mnt_ns_to_common(nsp->mnt_ns)); > > > > And this one might be even worse, because the mount namespace change > > itself is only stored in the nsproxy at this point, but the cwd and > > root paths have already been overwritten on the task's fs_struct. > > > > To actually make sys_set_ns() atomic, I think you'd need some > > moderately complicated prep work, splitting the ->install handlers up > > into prep work and a commit phase that can't fail. > > Wouldn't it be sufficient to move to an unshare like model, i.e. > creating a new set of creds, and passing the new user_ns to > create_new_namespaces() as well as having a temporary new_fs struct? > That should get rid of all intermediate stages. Ah, good point, I didn't realize that that already exists for unshare().
