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/* Background. */
For a very long time, extending openat(2) with new features has been
incredibly frustrating. This stems from the fact that openat(2) is
possibly the most famous counter-example to the mantra "don't silently
accept garbage from userspace" -- it doesn't check whether unknown flags
are present[1].
This means that (generally) the addition of new flags to openat(2) has
been fraught with backwards-compatibility issues (O_TMPFILE has to be
defined as __O_TMPFILE|O_DIRECTORY|[O_RDWR or O_WRONLY] to ensure old
kernels gave errors, since it's insecure to silently ignore the
flag[2]). All new security-related flags therefore have a tough road to
being added to openat(2).
Userspace also has a hard time figuring out whether a particular flag is
supported on a particular kernel. While it is now possible with
contemporary kernels (thanks to [3]), older kernels will expose unknown
flag bits through fcntl(F_GETFL). Giving a clear -EINVAL during
openat(2) time matches modern syscall designs and is far more
fool-proof.
In addition, the newly-added path resolution restriction LOOKUP flags
(which we would like to expose to user-space) don't feel related to the
pre-existing O_* flag set -- they affect all components of path lookup.
We'd therefore like to add a new flag argument.
Adding a new syscall allows us to finally fix the flag-ignoring problem,
and we can make it extensible enough so that we will hopefully never
need an openat3(2).
/* Syscall Prototype. */
/*
* open_how is an extensible structure (similar in interface to
* clone3(2) or sched_setattr(2)). The size parameter must be set to
* sizeof(struct open_how), to allow for future extensions. All future
* extensions will be appended to open_how, with their zero value
* acting as a no-op default.
*/
struct open_how { /* ... */ };
int openat2(int dfd, const char *pathname,
struct open_how *how, size_t size);
/* Description. */
The initial version of 'struct open_how' contains the following fields:
flags
Used to specify openat(2)-style flags. However, any unknown flag
bits or otherwise incorrect flag combinations (like O_PATH|O_RDWR)
will result in -EINVAL. In addition, this field is 64-bits wide to
allow for more O_ flags than currently permitted with openat(2).
mode
The file mode for O_CREAT or O_TMPFILE.
Must be set to zero if flags does not contain O_CREAT or O_TMPFILE.
resolve
Restrict path resolution (in contrast to O_* flags they affect all
path components). The current set of flags are as follows (at the
moment, all of the RESOLVE_ flags are implemented as just passing
the corresponding LOOKUP_ flag).
RESOLVE_NO_XDEV => LOOKUP_NO_XDEV
RESOLVE_NO_SYMLINKS => LOOKUP_NO_SYMLINKS
RESOLVE_NO_MAGICLINKS => LOOKUP_NO_MAGICLINKS
RESOLVE_BENEATH => LOOKUP_BENEATH
RESOLVE_IN_ROOT => LOOKUP_IN_ROOT
open_how does not contain an embedded size field, because it is of
little benefit (userspace can figure out the kernel open_how size at
runtime fairly easily without it). It also only contains u64s (even
though ->mode arguably should be a u16) to avoid having padding fields
which are never used in the future.
Note that as a result of the new how->flags handling, O_PATH|O_TMPFILE
is no longer permitted for openat(2). As far as I can tell, this has
always been a bug and appears to not be used by userspace (and I've not
seen any problems on my machines by disallowing it). If it turns out
this breaks something, we can special-case it and only permit it for
openat(2) but not openat2(2).
After input from Florian Weimer, the new open_how and flag definitions
are inside a separate header from uapi/linux/fcntl.h, to avoid problems
that glibc has with importing that header.
/* Testing. */
In a follow-up patch there are over 200 selftests which ensure that this
syscall has the correct semantics and will correctly handle several
attack scenarios.
In addition, I've written a userspace library[4] which provides
convenient wrappers around openat2(RESOLVE_IN_ROOT) (this is necessary
because no other syscalls support RESOLVE_IN_ROOT, and thus lots of care
must be taken when using RESOLVE_IN_ROOT'd file descriptors with other
syscalls). During the development of this patch, I've run numerous
verification tests using libpathrs (showing that the API is reasonably
usable by userspace).
/* Future Work. */
Additional RESOLVE_ flags have been suggested during the review period.
These can be easily implemented separately (such as blocking auto-mount
during resolution).
Furthermore, there are some other proposed changes to the openat(2)
interface (the most obvious example is magic-link hardening[5]) which
would be a good opportunity to add a way for userspace to restrict how
O_PATH file descriptors can be re-opened.
Another possible avenue of future work would be some kind of
CHECK_FIELDS[6] flag which causes the kernel to indicate to userspace
which openat2(2) flags and fields are supported by the current kernel
(to avoid userspace having to go through several guesses to figure it
out).
[1]: https://lwn.net/Articles/588444/
[2]: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CA+55aFyyxJL1LyXZeBsf2ypriraj5ut1XkNDsunRBqgVjZU_6Q@mail.gmail.com
[3]: commit
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| block | ||
| certs | ||
| crypto | ||
| Documentation | ||
| drivers | ||
| fs | ||
| include | ||
| init | ||
| ipc | ||
| kernel | ||
| lib | ||
| LICENSES | ||
| mm | ||
| net | ||
| samples | ||
| scripts | ||
| security | ||
| sound | ||
| tools | ||
| usr | ||
| virt | ||
| .clang-format | ||
| .cocciconfig | ||
| .get_maintainer.ignore | ||
| .gitattributes | ||
| .gitignore | ||
| .mailmap | ||
| COPYING | ||
| CREDITS | ||
| Kbuild | ||
| Kconfig | ||
| MAINTAINERS | ||
| Makefile | ||
| README | ||
Linux kernel
============
There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.
In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``. The formatted documentation can also be read online at:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/
There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.
Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.