[Devel] Re: [PATCH 1/6] user namespace : add the framework

[Serge E. Hallyn]

Quoting Kirill Korotaev (dev at sw.ru):
> Serge E. Hallyn wrote:
> > Quoting Andrew Morton (akpm at linux-foundation.org):
> > 
> >>On Mon, 4 Jun 2007 14:40:24 -0500 "Serge E. Hallyn" <serue at us.ibm.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>Add the user namespace struct and framework
> >>>
> >>>Basically, it will allow a process to unshare its user_struct table, resetting
> >>>at the same time its own user_struct and all the associated accounting.
> >>>
> >>>A new root user (uid == 0) is added to the user namespace upon creation.  Such
> >>>root users have full privileges and it seems that theses privileges should be
> >>>controlled through some means (process capabilities ?)
> >>
> >>The whole magical-uid-0-user thing in this patch seem just wrong to
> >>me.  
> >>
> >>I'll merge it anyway, mainly because I want to merge _something_ (why oh
> >>why do the git-tree guys leave everything to the last minute?) but it strikes
> >>me that there's something fundamentally wrong whenever the kernel starts
> >>"knowing" about the significance of UIDs in this fashion.
> > 
> > 
> > $(&(%
> > 
> > I thought I disagreed, but now I'm pretty sure I completely agree.
> > 
> > 'root_user' exists in the kernel right now, but the root_user checks
> > which exist (in fork.c and sys.c) shouldn't actually be applied for root
> > in a container, since the container may not be trusted.
> 
> This rlimit check doesn't help *untrusted* containers, so your logic is wrong here.
> Instead, it allows root of the container to operate in any situation.

And I'm not sure that should be the case.

In my view, root of a container is equivalent to a normal user on the
host system, just like root in a qemu process.

> E.g. consider root user hit the limit. After that you won't be able to login/ssh to fix anything.

That's fine in the container.

> NOTE: container root can have no CAP_SYS_RESOURCE and CAP_SYS_ADMIN as it is in OpenVZ.

And eventually we'll want that to be the default in upstream containers.
But it's not the case upstream right now.  Before we can do that, we
need an answer to per-container capabilities.

Do you (either you specifically, or anyone at openvz) have plans to
address the per-container capabilities problem?  Herbert?  Eric?

I'm interested, but would like to get the file capabilites squared away
before I consider coding on it.

> But in general I'm not against the patch, since in OpenVZ we can replace the check
> with another capability we use for VE admin - CAP_VE_SYS_ADMIN.

If that truly sufficies then great.  If not, then in order to support
openvz in the meantime I say we drop my patch, but we remember that when
we straighten out the security issues this will need to be addressed.

thanks,
-serge
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