[PATCH 16/16] mount: Add a flag to not follow symlink at the end of mount point

Vivek Goyal
2013-09-10T21:45:11Z

I have a requirement where I want to make sure that mount() fails if
mount point is a symlink. Hence introducing a new mount flag MS_NOSYMLINK.

Following is little more info on what I am trying to do. I am trying
to write patches for signed /sbin/kexec. That is /sbin/kexec binary will
be signed and in secureboot environment kernel will verify signature
of /sbin/kexec and upon successful verfication, /sbin/kexec will be
trusted and allowed to load new kernel.

/sbin/kexec gathers bunch of data from /sys and /proc. Given the fact that
only /sbin/kexec is trusted and not other root processes, one need to make
sure that a root process can not alter /sys or /proc to fool /sbin/kexec.

So requirement is that /sbin/kexec needs to make sure that it is
looking at /proc and /sys as exported by kernel (and not an artificial
view possibly created by a root process).

Eric Biederman suggested that use per process mount name space functionality.
/sbin/kexec runs as root. So create separate mount namespace. Make it
recursively private to disable any event propogation. Unmount existing
/proc and /sys and remount them.

Actual code of what I am trying to do in kexec-tools is posted here.

https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/kernel/2013-September/004463.html

Al Viro mentioned that one needs to make sure /proc and /sys are not symlinks.
Otherwise after remounting, root could remove symlinks and create /proc and
/sys with its own files.

And there comes the need to make sure mount point is not a symlink
and hence this patch.

I did basic testing by doing following and it seems to work.

syscall(__NR_mount, "none", <mount-point>, "proc", 1<<25,"");

Signed-off-by: Vivek Goyal <vgoyal@redhat.com>
---
fs/namespace.c | 6 +++++-
include/uapi/linux/fs.h | 1 +
2 files changed, 6 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/fs/namespace.c b/fs/namespace.c
index 7b1ca9b..d19627e 100644
--- a/fs/namespace.c
+++ b/fs/namespace.c
@@ -2278,7 +2278,11 @@ long do_mount(const char *dev_name, const char *dir_name,
((char *)data_page)[PAGE_SIZE - 1] = 0;

/* ... and get the mountpoint */
- retval = kern_path(dir_name, LOOKUP_FOLLOW, &path);
+ if (flags & MS_NOSYMLINK)
+ retval = kern_path(dir_name, 0, &path);
+ else
+ retval = kern_path(dir_name, LOOKUP_FOLLOW, &path);
+
if (retval)
return retval;

diff --git a/include/uapi/linux/fs.h b/include/uapi/linux/fs.h
index a4ed56c..584f083 100644
--- a/include/uapi/linux/fs.h
+++ b/include/uapi/linux/fs.h
@@ -86,6 +86,7 @@ struct inodes_stat_t {
#define MS_KERNMOUNT (1<<22) /* this is a kern_mount call */
#define MS_I_VERSION (1<<23) /* Update inode I_version field */
#define MS_STRICTATIME (1<<24) /* Always perform atime updates */
+#define MS_NOSYMLINK (1<<25) /* Do not follow symlink at the end */

/* These sb flags are internal to the kernel */
#define MS_NOSEC (1<<28)
--
1.8.3.1