23 Oct, 2007

1 commit

  • Gabriel C reported that modprobing appletalk on current git gives a
    warning in dmesg :

    "sysctl table check failed: /net/appletalk .3.7 procname does not match binary path procname"

    Oops. My apologies it appears I made a mistake when creating my table
    to check up on sysctl values.

    Signed-off-by: "Eric W. Biederman"
    Tested-by: Gabriel C
    Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

    Eric W. Biederman
     

19 Oct, 2007

4 commits

  • The non-filesystem capability meaning of CAP_SETPCAP is that a process, p1,
    can change the capabilities of another process, p2. This is not the
    meaning that was intended for this capability at all, and this
    implementation came about purely because, without filesystem capabilities,
    there was no way to use capabilities without one process bestowing them on
    another.

    Since we now have a filesystem support for capabilities we can fix the
    implementation of CAP_SETPCAP.

    The most significant thing about this change is that, with it in effect, no
    process can set the capabilities of another process.

    The capabilities of a program are set via the capability convolution
    rules:

    pI(post-exec) = pI(pre-exec)
    pP(post-exec) = (X(aka cap_bset) & fP) | (pI(post-exec) & fI)
    pE(post-exec) = fE ? pP(post-exec) : 0

    at exec() time. As such, the only influence the pre-exec() program can
    have on the post-exec() program's capabilities are through the pI
    capability set.

    The correct implementation for CAP_SETPCAP (and that enabled by this patch)
    is that it can be used to add extra pI capabilities to the current process
    - to be picked up by subsequent exec()s when the above convolution rules
    are applied.

    Here is how it works:

    Let's say we have a process, p. It has capability sets, pE, pP and pI.
    Generally, p, can change the value of its own pI to pI' where

    (pI' & ~pI) & ~pP = 0.

    That is, the only new things in pI' that were not present in pI need to
    be present in pP.

    The role of CAP_SETPCAP is basically to permit changes to pI beyond
    the above:

    if (pE & CAP_SETPCAP) {
    pI' = anything; /* ie., even (pI' & ~pI) & ~pP != 0 */
    }

    This capability is useful for things like login, which (say, via
    pam_cap) might want to raise certain inheritable capabilities for use
    by the children of the logged-in user's shell, but those capabilities
    are not useful to or needed by the login program itself.

    One such use might be to limit who can run ping. You set the
    capabilities of the 'ping' program to be "= cap_net_raw+i", and then
    only shells that have (pI & CAP_NET_RAW) will be able to run
    it. Without CAP_SETPCAP implemented as described above, login(pam_cap)
    would have to also have (pP & CAP_NET_RAW) in order to raise this
    capability and pass it on through the inheritable set.

    Signed-off-by: Andrew Morgan
    Signed-off-by: Serge E. Hallyn
    Cc: Stephen Smalley
    Cc: James Morris
    Cc: Casey Schaufler
    Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton
    Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

    Andrew Morgan
     
  • It turns out that the net/irda code didn't register any of it's binary paths
    in the global sysctl.h header file so I missed them completely when making an
    authoritative list of binary sysctl paths in the kernel. So add them to the
    list of valid binary sysctl paths.

    Signed-off-by: Eric W. Biederman
    Acked-by: Samuel Ortiz
    Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton
    Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

    Eric W. Biederman
     
  • Well it turns out after I dug into the problems a little more I was returning
    a few false positives so this patch updates my logic to remove them.

    - Don't complain about 0 ctl_names in sysctl_check_binary_path
    It is valid for someone to remove the sysctl binary interface
    and still keep the same sysctl proc interface.

    - Count ctl_names and procnames as matching if they both don't
    exist.

    - Only warn about missing min&max when the generic functions care.

    Signed-off-by: Eric W. Biederman
    Cc: Alexey Dobriyan
    Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton
    Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

    Eric W. Biederman
     
  • After going through the kernels sysctl tables several times it has become
    clear that code review and testing is just not effective in prevent
    problematic sysctl tables from being used in the stable kernel. I certainly
    can't seem to fix the problems as fast as they are introduced.

    Therefore this patch adds sysctl_check_table which is called when a sysctl
    table is registered and checks to see if we have a problematic sysctl table.

    The biggest part of the code is the table of valid binary sysctl entries, but
    since we have frozen our set of binary sysctls this table should not need to
    change, and it makes it much easier to detect when someone unintentionally
    adds a new binary sysctl value.

    As best as I can determine all of the several hundred errors spewed on boot up
    now are legitimate.

    [bunk@kernel.org: kernel/sysctl_check.c must #include ]
    Signed-off-by: Eric W. Biederman
    Cc: Alexey Dobriyan
    Signed-off-by: Adrian Bunk
    Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton
    Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

    Eric W. Biederman