Re: [PATCH] mmap: add sysctl for controlling ~VM_MAYEXEC taint

[Will Drewry <wad@chromium.org>]

On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 2:40 PM, Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 10:07:46AM -0700, Roland McGrath wrote:
>> On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 2:33 AM, Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> wrote:
>> > Is using shm_open()+mmap instead of open()+mmap() to open a file on
>> > /dev/shm really that difficult?
>> >
>> > int shm_open(const char *name, int oflag, mode_t mode);
>> > int open(const char *pathname, int flags, mode_t mode);
>>
>> I cannot figure out the rationale behind this question at all.
>> Both of these library functions result in the same system call.
>>
>
> They might result in the same system call but one of them creates
> the file under /dev/shm which should not have the same permissions
> problem. The library really appears to want to create a shared
> executable object, using shm_open does not appear that unreasonable
> to me.

If /dev/shm is mounted noexec, the resulting file will have VM_MAYEXEC
stripped.  I don't believe it is capable of doing anything special
that will cause the mmap code path to find a different containing
mountpoint.  If it could, then that would certainly be preferable, but
it would also make this VM_MAYEXEC calculation less effective in the
default case.

thanks!

>> > An ordinary user is not going to know that a segfault from an
>> > application can be fixed with this sysctl. This looks like something
>> > that should be fixed in the library so that it can work on kernels
>> > that do not have the sysctl.
>>
>> I think the expectation is that the administrator or system builder
>> who decides to set the (non-default) noexec mount option will also
>> set the sysctl at the same time.
>>
>
> Which then needs to be copied in each distro wanting to do the same
> thing and is not backwards compatible where as using shm_open is.
>
> --
> Mel Gorman
> SUSE Labs
>

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