linux/Documentation/userspace-api
Linus Torvalds 6c32978414 Notifications over pipes + Keyring notifications
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
 
 iQIzBAABCAAdFiEEqG5UsNXhtOCrfGQP+7dXa6fLC2sFAl7U/i8ACgkQ+7dXa6fL
 C2u2eg/+Oy6ybq0hPovYVkFI9WIG7ZCz7w9Q6BEnfYMqqn3dnfJxKQ3l4pnQEOWw
 f4QfvpvevsYfMtOJkYcG6s66rQgbFdqc5TEyBBy0QNp3acRolN7IXkcopvv9xOpQ
 JxedpbFG1PTFLWjvBpyjlrUPouwLzq2FXAf1Ox0ZIMw6165mYOMWoli1VL8dh0A0
 Ai7JUB0WrvTNbrwhV413obIzXT/rPCdcrgbQcgrrLPex8lQ47ZAE9bq6k4q5HiwK
 KRzEqkQgnzId6cCNTFBfkTWsx89zZunz7jkfM5yx30MvdAtPSxvvpfIPdZRZkXsP
 E2K9Fk1/6OQZTC0Op3Pi/bt+hVG/mD1p0sQUDgo2MO3qlSS+5mMkR8h3mJEgwK12
 72P4YfOJkuAy2z3v4lL0GYdUDAZY6i6G8TMxERKu/a9O3VjTWICDOyBUS6F8YEAK
 C7HlbZxAEOKTVK0BTDTeEUBwSeDrBbvH6MnRlZCG5g1Fos2aWP0udhjiX8IfZLO7
 GN6nWBvK1fYzfsUczdhgnoCzQs3suoDo04HnsTPGJ8De52T4x2RsjV+gPx0nrNAq
 eWChl1JvMWsY2B3GLnl9XQz4NNN+EreKEkk+PULDGllrArrPsp5Vnhb9FJO1PVCU
 hMDJHohPiXnKbc8f4Bd78OhIvnuoGfJPdM5MtNe2flUKy2a2ops=
 =YTGf
 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Merge tag 'notifications-20200601' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/dhowells/linux-fs

Pull notification queue from David Howells:
 "This adds a general notification queue concept and adds an event
  source for keys/keyrings, such as linking and unlinking keys and
  changing their attributes.

  Thanks to Debarshi Ray, we do have a pull request to use this to fix a
  problem with gnome-online-accounts - as mentioned last time:

     https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-online-accounts/merge_requests/47

  Without this, g-o-a has to constantly poll a keyring-based kerberos
  cache to find out if kinit has changed anything.

  [ There are other notification pending: mount/sb fsinfo notifications
    for libmount that Karel Zak and Ian Kent have been working on, and
    Christian Brauner would like to use them in lxc, but let's see how
    this one works first ]

  LSM hooks are included:

   - A set of hooks are provided that allow an LSM to rule on whether or
     not a watch may be set. Each of these hooks takes a different
     "watched object" parameter, so they're not really shareable. The
     LSM should use current's credentials. [Wanted by SELinux & Smack]

   - A hook is provided to allow an LSM to rule on whether or not a
     particular message may be posted to a particular queue. This is
     given the credentials from the event generator (which may be the
     system) and the watch setter. [Wanted by Smack]

  I've provided SELinux and Smack with implementations of some of these
  hooks.

  WHY
  ===

  Key/keyring notifications are desirable because if you have your
  kerberos tickets in a file/directory, your Gnome desktop will monitor
  that using something like fanotify and tell you if your credentials
  cache changes.

  However, we also have the ability to cache your kerberos tickets in
  the session, user or persistent keyring so that it isn't left around
  on disk across a reboot or logout. Keyrings, however, cannot currently
  be monitored asynchronously, so the desktop has to poll for it - not
  so good on a laptop. This facility will allow the desktop to avoid the
  need to poll.

  DESIGN DECISIONS
  ================

   - The notification queue is built on top of a standard pipe. Messages
     are effectively spliced in. The pipe is opened with a special flag:

        pipe2(fds, O_NOTIFICATION_PIPE);

     The special flag has the same value as O_EXCL (which doesn't seem
     like it will ever be applicable in this context)[?]. It is given up
     front to make it a lot easier to prohibit splice&co from accessing
     the pipe.

     [?] Should this be done some other way?  I'd rather not use up a new
         O_* flag if I can avoid it - should I add a pipe3() system call
         instead?

     The pipe is then configured::

        ioctl(fds[1], IOC_WATCH_QUEUE_SET_SIZE, queue_depth);
        ioctl(fds[1], IOC_WATCH_QUEUE_SET_FILTER, &filter);

     Messages are then read out of the pipe using read().

   - It should be possible to allow write() to insert data into the
     notification pipes too, but this is currently disabled as the
     kernel has to be able to insert messages into the pipe *without*
     holding pipe->mutex and the code to make this work needs careful
     auditing.

   - sendfile(), splice() and vmsplice() are disabled on notification
     pipes because of the pipe->mutex issue and also because they
     sometimes want to revert what they just did - but one or more
     notification messages might've been interleaved in the ring.

   - The kernel inserts messages with the wait queue spinlock held. This
     means that pipe_read() and pipe_write() have to take the spinlock
     to update the queue pointers.

   - Records in the buffer are binary, typed and have a length so that
     they can be of varying size.

     This allows multiple heterogeneous sources to share a common
     buffer; there are 16 million types available, of which I've used
     just a few, so there is scope for others to be used. Tags may be
     specified when a watchpoint is created to help distinguish the
     sources.

   - Records are filterable as types have up to 256 subtypes that can be
     individually filtered. Other filtration is also available.

   - Notification pipes don't interfere with each other; each may be
     bound to a different set of watches. Any particular notification
     will be copied to all the queues that are currently watching for it
     - and only those that are watching for it.

   - When recording a notification, the kernel will not sleep, but will
     rather mark a queue as having lost a message if there's
     insufficient space. read() will fabricate a loss notification
     message at an appropriate point later.

   - The notification pipe is created and then watchpoints are attached
     to it, using one of:

        keyctl_watch_key(KEY_SPEC_SESSION_KEYRING, fds[1], 0x01);
        watch_mount(AT_FDCWD, "/", 0, fd, 0x02);
        watch_sb(AT_FDCWD, "/mnt", 0, fd, 0x03);

     where in both cases, fd indicates the queue and the number after is
     a tag between 0 and 255.

   - Watches are removed if either the notification pipe is destroyed or
     the watched object is destroyed. In the latter case, a message will
     be generated indicating the enforced watch removal.

  Things I want to avoid:

   - Introducing features that make the core VFS dependent on the
     network stack or networking namespaces (ie. usage of netlink).

   - Dumping all this stuff into dmesg and having a daemon that sits
     there parsing the output and distributing it as this then puts the
     responsibility for security into userspace and makes handling
     namespaces tricky. Further, dmesg might not exist or might be
     inaccessible inside a container.

   - Letting users see events they shouldn't be able to see.

  TESTING AND MANPAGES
  ====================

   - The keyutils tree has a pipe-watch branch that has keyctl commands
     for making use of notifications. Proposed manual pages can also be
     found on this branch, though a couple of them really need to go to
     the main manpages repository instead.

     If the kernel supports the watching of keys, then running "make
     test" on that branch will cause the testing infrastructure to spawn
     a monitoring process on the side that monitors a notifications pipe
     for all the key/keyring changes induced by the tests and they'll
     all be checked off to make sure they happened.

        https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/dhowells/keyutils.git/log/?h=pipe-watch

   - A test program is provided (samples/watch_queue/watch_test) that
     can be used to monitor for keyrings, mount and superblock events.
     Information on the notifications is simply logged to stdout"

* tag 'notifications-20200601' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/dhowells/linux-fs:
  smack: Implement the watch_key and post_notification hooks
  selinux: Implement the watch_key security hook
  keys: Make the KEY_NEED_* perms an enum rather than a mask
  pipe: Add notification lossage handling
  pipe: Allow buffers to be marked read-whole-or-error for notifications
  Add sample notification program
  watch_queue: Add a key/keyring notification facility
  security: Add hooks to rule on setting a watch
  pipe: Add general notification queue support
  pipe: Add O_NOTIFICATION_PIPE
  security: Add a hook for the point of notification insertion
  uapi: General notification queue definitions
2020-06-13 09:56:21 -07:00
..
accelerators docs: ocxl.rst: add it to the uAPI book 2019-07-15 11:03:02 -03:00
ioctl Notifications over pipes + Keyring notifications 2020-06-13 09:56:21 -07:00
media media: v4l2-ctrl: Document V4L2_CID_CAMERA_SENSOR_ROTATION 2020-05-18 15:33:48 +02:00
index.rst media: docs: get rid of Documentation/media/ 2020-04-14 10:36:50 +02:00
no_new_privs.rst doc: ReSTify no_new_privs.txt 2017-05-18 10:30:09 -06:00
seccomp_filter.rst Documentation: seccomp: unify list indentation 2019-03-18 12:00:28 -06:00
spec_ctrl.rst Documentation: Add section about CPU vulnerabilities for Spectre 2019-06-26 11:42:41 -06:00
unshare.rst doc-rst: fix inline emphasis in unshare.rst 2017-05-18 10:23:10 -06:00