Hi Paul and Stephen,
On Fri, 20 Oct 2023 11:55:31 -0400, Paul Moore wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 20, 2023 at 8:21 AM Stephen Smalley
> <stephen.smalley.work@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > On Wed, Oct 18, 2023 at 6:08 AM David Disseldorp <ddiss@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> > >
> > > Extended attribute copy-up functionality added via 19472b69d639d
> > > ("selinux: Implementation for inode_copy_up_xattr() hook") sees
> > > "security.selinux" contexts dropped, instead relying on contexts
> > > applied via the inode_copy_up() hook.
> > >
> > > When copy-up takes place during early boot, prior to selinux
> > > initialization / policy load, the context stripping can be unwanted
> > > and unexpected. Make filtering dependent on selinux_initialized().
> > >
> > > RFC: This changes user behaviour so is likely unacceptable. Still,
> > > I'd be interested in hearing other suggestions for how this could be
> > > addressed.
> >
> > IMHO, this is fixing a bug, only affects early userspace (pre policy
> > load), and is likely acceptable.
> > But Paul will make the final call. We can't introduce and use a new
> > policy capability here because this is before policy has been loaded.
>
> I agree with Stephen, this is a bug fix so I wouldn't worry too much
> about user visible behavior. For better or worse, the
> SELinux-enabled-but-no-policy-loaded case has always been a bit
> awkward and has required multiple patches over the years to correct
> unwanted behaviors.
Understood.
> I'm open to comments on this, but I don't believe this is something we
> want to see backported to the stable kernels, and considering we are
> currently at v6.6-rc6, this isn't really a candidate for the upcoming
> merge window. This means we have a few more weeks to comment, test,
> etc. and one of the things I would like to see is a better description
> of before-and-after labeling in the commit description. This helps
> people who trip over this change, identify what changed, and helps
> them resolve the problem on their systems.
>
> Does that sound good?
That sounds good to me. I'll rework the commit description (and comment
above this change), do some further testing and then submit a v2.
Thanks for your feedback,
David
