Re: [PATCH RFC 4/5] net/tls: Add support for PF_TLSH (a TLS handshake listener)

Hannes Reinecke
2022-04-28T14:04:40Z

On 4/28/22 15:30, Jakub Kicinski wrote:
> On Thu, 28 Apr 2022 09:26:41 +0200 Hannes Reinecke wrote:
>> The whole thing started off with the problem on _how_ sockets could be
>> passed between kernel and userspace and vice versa.
>> While there is fd passing between processes via AF_UNIX, there is no
>> such mechanism between kernel and userspace.
>
> Noob question - the kernel <> user space FD sharing is just
> not implemented yet, or somehow fundamentally hard because kernel
> fds are "special"?

Noob reply: wish I knew.
(I somewhat hoped _you_ would've been able to tell me.)

Thing is, the only method I could think of for fd passing is the POSIX
fd passing via unix_attach_fds()/unix_detach_fds().
But that's AF_UNIX, which really is designed for process-to-process
communication, not process-to-kernel.
So you probably have to move a similar logic over to AF_NETLINK. And
design a new interface on how fds should be passed over AF_NETLINK.

But then you have to face the issue that AF_NELINK is essentially UDP,
and you have _no_ idea if and how many processes do listen on the other
end. Thing is, you (as the sender) have to copy the fd over to the
receiving process, so you'd better _hope_ there is a receiving process.
Not to mention that there might be several processes listening in...

And that's something I _definitely_ don't feel comfortable with without
guidance from the networking folks, so I didn't pursue it further and we
went with the 'accept()' mechanism Chuck implemented.

I'm open to suggestions, though.

Cheers,

Hannes
--
Dr. Hannes Reinecke Kernel Storage Architect
hare@suse.de +49 911 74053 688
SUSE Software Solutions Germany GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg
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