diff options
author | Lachlan McIlroy <lachlan@redback.melbourne.sgi.com> | 2008-12-29 00:47:18 -0500 |
---|---|---|
committer | Lachlan McIlroy <lachlan@redback.melbourne.sgi.com> | 2008-12-29 00:47:18 -0500 |
commit | 0a8c5395f90f06d128247844b2515c8bf3f2826b (patch) | |
tree | d95382dcdfa303b99d480c01763d6cb6767fdaca /Documentation/credentials.txt | |
parent | 25051158bbed127e8672b43396c71c5eb610e5f1 (diff) | |
parent | 3c92ec8ae91ecf59d88c798301833d7cf83f2179 (diff) |
[XFS] Fix merge failures
Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6
Conflicts:
fs/xfs/linux-2.6/xfs_cred.h
fs/xfs/linux-2.6/xfs_globals.h
fs/xfs/linux-2.6/xfs_ioctl.c
fs/xfs/xfs_vnodeops.h
Signed-off-by: Lachlan McIlroy <lachlan@sgi.com>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/credentials.txt')
-rw-r--r-- | Documentation/credentials.txt | 582 |
1 files changed, 582 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/credentials.txt b/Documentation/credentials.txt new file mode 100644 index 000000000000..df03169782ea --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/credentials.txt | |||
@@ -0,0 +1,582 @@ | |||
1 | ==================== | ||
2 | CREDENTIALS IN LINUX | ||
3 | ==================== | ||
4 | |||
5 | By: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com> | ||
6 | |||
7 | Contents: | ||
8 | |||
9 | (*) Overview. | ||
10 | |||
11 | (*) Types of credentials. | ||
12 | |||
13 | (*) File markings. | ||
14 | |||
15 | (*) Task credentials. | ||
16 | |||
17 | - Immutable credentials. | ||
18 | - Accessing task credentials. | ||
19 | - Accessing another task's credentials. | ||
20 | - Altering credentials. | ||
21 | - Managing credentials. | ||
22 | |||
23 | (*) Open file credentials. | ||
24 | |||
25 | (*) Overriding the VFS's use of credentials. | ||
26 | |||
27 | |||
28 | ======== | ||
29 | OVERVIEW | ||
30 | ======== | ||
31 | |||
32 | There are several parts to the security check performed by Linux when one | ||
33 | object acts upon another: | ||
34 | |||
35 | (1) Objects. | ||
36 | |||
37 | Objects are things in the system that may be acted upon directly by | ||
38 | userspace programs. Linux has a variety of actionable objects, including: | ||
39 | |||
40 | - Tasks | ||
41 | - Files/inodes | ||
42 | - Sockets | ||
43 | - Message queues | ||
44 | - Shared memory segments | ||
45 | - Semaphores | ||
46 | - Keys | ||
47 | |||
48 | As a part of the description of all these objects there is a set of | ||
49 | credentials. What's in the set depends on the type of object. | ||
50 | |||
51 | (2) Object ownership. | ||
52 | |||
53 | Amongst the credentials of most objects, there will be a subset that | ||
54 | indicates the ownership of that object. This is used for resource | ||
55 | accounting and limitation (disk quotas and task rlimits for example). | ||
56 | |||
57 | In a standard UNIX filesystem, for instance, this will be defined by the | ||
58 | UID marked on the inode. | ||
59 | |||
60 | (3) The objective context. | ||
61 | |||
62 | Also amongst the credentials of those objects, there will be a subset that | ||
63 | indicates the 'objective context' of that object. This may or may not be | ||
64 | the same set as in (2) - in standard UNIX files, for instance, this is the | ||
65 | defined by the UID and the GID marked on the inode. | ||
66 | |||
67 | The objective context is used as part of the security calculation that is | ||
68 | carried out when an object is acted upon. | ||
69 | |||
70 | (4) Subjects. | ||
71 | |||
72 | A subject is an object that is acting upon another object. | ||
73 | |||
74 | Most of the objects in the system are inactive: they don't act on other | ||
75 | objects within the system. Processes/tasks are the obvious exception: | ||
76 | they do stuff; they access and manipulate things. | ||
77 | |||
78 | Objects other than tasks may under some circumstances also be subjects. | ||
79 | For instance an open file may send SIGIO to a task using the UID and EUID | ||
80 | given to it by a task that called fcntl(F_SETOWN) upon it. In this case, | ||
81 | the file struct will have a subjective context too. | ||
82 | |||
83 | (5) The subjective context. | ||
84 | |||
85 | A subject has an additional interpretation of its credentials. A subset | ||
86 | of its credentials forms the 'subjective context'. The subjective context | ||
87 | is used as part of the security calculation that is carried out when a | ||
88 | subject acts. | ||
89 | |||
90 | A Linux task, for example, has the FSUID, FSGID and the supplementary | ||
91 | group list for when it is acting upon a file - which are quite separate | ||
92 | from the real UID and GID that normally form the objective context of the | ||
93 | task. | ||
94 | |||
95 | (6) Actions. | ||
96 | |||
97 | Linux has a number of actions available that a subject may perform upon an | ||
98 | object. The set of actions available depends on the nature of the subject | ||
99 | and the object. | ||
100 | |||
101 | Actions include reading, writing, creating and deleting files; forking or | ||
102 | signalling and tracing tasks. | ||
103 | |||
104 | (7) Rules, access control lists and security calculations. | ||
105 | |||
106 | When a subject acts upon an object, a security calculation is made. This | ||
107 | involves taking the subjective context, the objective context and the | ||
108 | action, and searching one or more sets of rules to see whether the subject | ||
109 | is granted or denied permission to act in the desired manner on the | ||
110 | object, given those contexts. | ||
111 | |||
112 | There are two main sources of rules: | ||
113 | |||
114 | (a) Discretionary access control (DAC): | ||
115 | |||
116 | Sometimes the object will include sets of rules as part of its | ||
117 | description. This is an 'Access Control List' or 'ACL'. A Linux | ||
118 | file may supply more than one ACL. | ||
119 | |||
120 | A traditional UNIX file, for example, includes a permissions mask that | ||
121 | is an abbreviated ACL with three fixed classes of subject ('user', | ||
122 | 'group' and 'other'), each of which may be granted certain privileges | ||
123 | ('read', 'write' and 'execute' - whatever those map to for the object | ||
124 | in question). UNIX file permissions do not allow the arbitrary | ||
125 | specification of subjects, however, and so are of limited use. | ||
126 | |||
127 | A Linux file might also sport a POSIX ACL. This is a list of rules | ||
128 | that grants various permissions to arbitrary subjects. | ||
129 | |||
130 | (b) Mandatory access control (MAC): | ||
131 | |||
132 | The system as a whole may have one or more sets of rules that get | ||
133 | applied to all subjects and objects, regardless of their source. | ||
134 | SELinux and Smack are examples of this. | ||
135 | |||
136 | In the case of SELinux and Smack, each object is given a label as part | ||
137 | of its credentials. When an action is requested, they take the | ||
138 | subject label, the object label and the action and look for a rule | ||
139 | that says that this action is either granted or denied. | ||
140 | |||
141 | |||
142 | ==================== | ||
143 | TYPES OF CREDENTIALS | ||
144 | ==================== | ||
145 | |||
146 | The Linux kernel supports the following types of credentials: | ||
147 | |||
148 | (1) Traditional UNIX credentials. | ||
149 | |||
150 | Real User ID | ||
151 | Real Group ID | ||
152 | |||
153 | The UID and GID are carried by most, if not all, Linux objects, even if in | ||
154 | some cases it has to be invented (FAT or CIFS files for example, which are | ||
155 | derived from Windows). These (mostly) define the objective context of | ||
156 | that object, with tasks being slightly different in some cases. | ||
157 | |||
158 | Effective, Saved and FS User ID | ||
159 | Effective, Saved and FS Group ID | ||
160 | Supplementary groups | ||
161 | |||
162 | These are additional credentials used by tasks only. Usually, an | ||
163 | EUID/EGID/GROUPS will be used as the subjective context, and real UID/GID | ||
164 | will be used as the objective. For tasks, it should be noted that this is | ||
165 | not always true. | ||
166 | |||
167 | (2) Capabilities. | ||
168 | |||
169 | Set of permitted capabilities | ||
170 | Set of inheritable capabilities | ||
171 | Set of effective capabilities | ||
172 | Capability bounding set | ||
173 | |||
174 | These are only carried by tasks. They indicate superior capabilities | ||
175 | granted piecemeal to a task that an ordinary task wouldn't otherwise have. | ||
176 | These are manipulated implicitly by changes to the traditional UNIX | ||
177 | credentials, but can also be manipulated directly by the capset() system | ||
178 | call. | ||
179 | |||
180 | The permitted capabilities are those caps that the process might grant | ||
181 | itself to its effective or permitted sets through capset(). This | ||
182 | inheritable set might also be so constrained. | ||
183 | |||
184 | The effective capabilities are the ones that a task is actually allowed to | ||
185 | make use of itself. | ||
186 | |||
187 | The inheritable capabilities are the ones that may get passed across | ||
188 | execve(). | ||
189 | |||
190 | The bounding set limits the capabilities that may be inherited across | ||
191 | execve(), especially when a binary is executed that will execute as UID 0. | ||
192 | |||
193 | (3) Secure management flags (securebits). | ||
194 | |||
195 | These are only carried by tasks. These govern the way the above | ||
196 | credentials are manipulated and inherited over certain operations such as | ||
197 | execve(). They aren't used directly as objective or subjective | ||
198 | credentials. | ||
199 | |||
200 | (4) Keys and keyrings. | ||
201 | |||
202 | These are only carried by tasks. They carry and cache security tokens | ||
203 | that don't fit into the other standard UNIX credentials. They are for | ||
204 | making such things as network filesystem keys available to the file | ||
205 | accesses performed by processes, without the necessity of ordinary | ||
206 | programs having to know about security details involved. | ||
207 | |||
208 | Keyrings are a special type of key. They carry sets of other keys and can | ||
209 | be searched for the desired key. Each process may subscribe to a number | ||
210 | of keyrings: | ||
211 | |||
212 | Per-thread keying | ||
213 | Per-process keyring | ||
214 | Per-session keyring | ||
215 | |||
216 | When a process accesses a key, if not already present, it will normally be | ||
217 | cached on one of these keyrings for future accesses to find. | ||
218 | |||
219 | For more information on using keys, see Documentation/keys.txt. | ||
220 | |||
221 | (5) LSM | ||
222 | |||
223 | The Linux Security Module allows extra controls to be placed over the | ||
224 | operations that a task may do. Currently Linux supports two main | ||
225 | alternate LSM options: SELinux and Smack. | ||
226 | |||
227 | Both work by labelling the objects in a system and then applying sets of | ||
228 | rules (policies) that say what operations a task with one label may do to | ||
229 | an object with another label. | ||
230 | |||
231 | (6) AF_KEY | ||
232 | |||
233 | This is a socket-based approach to credential management for networking | ||
234 | stacks [RFC 2367]. It isn't discussed by this document as it doesn't | ||
235 | interact directly with task and file credentials; rather it keeps system | ||
236 | level credentials. | ||
237 | |||
238 | |||
239 | When a file is opened, part of the opening task's subjective context is | ||
240 | recorded in the file struct created. This allows operations using that file | ||
241 | struct to use those credentials instead of the subjective context of the task | ||
242 | that issued the operation. An example of this would be a file opened on a | ||
243 | network filesystem where the credentials of the opened file should be presented | ||
244 | to the server, regardless of who is actually doing a read or a write upon it. | ||
245 | |||
246 | |||
247 | ============= | ||
248 | FILE MARKINGS | ||
249 | ============= | ||
250 | |||
251 | Files on disk or obtained over the network may have annotations that form the | ||
252 | objective security context of that file. Depending on the type of filesystem, | ||
253 | this may include one or more of the following: | ||
254 | |||
255 | (*) UNIX UID, GID, mode; | ||
256 | |||
257 | (*) Windows user ID; | ||
258 | |||
259 | (*) Access control list; | ||
260 | |||
261 | (*) LSM security label; | ||
262 | |||
263 | (*) UNIX exec privilege escalation bits (SUID/SGID); | ||
264 | |||
265 | (*) File capabilities exec privilege escalation bits. | ||
266 | |||
267 | These are compared to the task's subjective security context, and certain | ||
268 | operations allowed or disallowed as a result. In the case of execve(), the | ||
269 | privilege escalation bits come into play, and may allow the resulting process | ||
270 | extra privileges, based on the annotations on the executable file. | ||
271 | |||
272 | |||
273 | ================ | ||
274 | TASK CREDENTIALS | ||
275 | ================ | ||
276 | |||
277 | In Linux, all of a task's credentials are held in (uid, gid) or through | ||
278 | (groups, keys, LSM security) a refcounted structure of type 'struct cred'. | ||
279 | Each task points to its credentials by a pointer called 'cred' in its | ||
280 | task_struct. | ||
281 | |||
282 | Once a set of credentials has been prepared and committed, it may not be | ||
283 | changed, barring the following exceptions: | ||
284 | |||
285 | (1) its reference count may be changed; | ||
286 | |||
287 | (2) the reference count on the group_info struct it points to may be changed; | ||
288 | |||
289 | (3) the reference count on the security data it points to may be changed; | ||
290 | |||
291 | (4) the reference count on any keyrings it points to may be changed; | ||
292 | |||
293 | (5) any keyrings it points to may be revoked, expired or have their security | ||
294 | attributes changed; and | ||
295 | |||
296 | (6) the contents of any keyrings to which it points may be changed (the whole | ||
297 | point of keyrings being a shared set of credentials, modifiable by anyone | ||
298 | with appropriate access). | ||
299 | |||
300 | To alter anything in the cred struct, the copy-and-replace principle must be | ||
301 | adhered to. First take a copy, then alter the copy and then use RCU to change | ||
302 | the task pointer to make it point to the new copy. There are wrappers to aid | ||
303 | with this (see below). | ||
304 | |||
305 | A task may only alter its _own_ credentials; it is no longer permitted for a | ||
306 | task to alter another's credentials. This means the capset() system call is no | ||
307 | longer permitted to take any PID other than the one of the current process. | ||
308 | Also keyctl_instantiate() and keyctl_negate() functions no longer permit | ||
309 | attachment to process-specific keyrings in the requesting process as the | ||
310 | instantiating process may need to create them. | ||
311 | |||
312 | |||
313 | IMMUTABLE CREDENTIALS | ||
314 | --------------------- | ||
315 | |||
316 | Once a set of credentials has been made public (by calling commit_creds() for | ||
317 | example), it must be considered immutable, barring two exceptions: | ||
318 | |||
319 | (1) The reference count may be altered. | ||
320 | |||
321 | (2) Whilst the keyring subscriptions of a set of credentials may not be | ||
322 | changed, the keyrings subscribed to may have their contents altered. | ||
323 | |||
324 | To catch accidental credential alteration at compile time, struct task_struct | ||
325 | has _const_ pointers to its credential sets, as does struct file. Furthermore, | ||
326 | certain functions such as get_cred() and put_cred() operate on const pointers, | ||
327 | thus rendering casts unnecessary, but require to temporarily ditch the const | ||
328 | qualification to be able to alter the reference count. | ||
329 | |||
330 | |||
331 | ACCESSING TASK CREDENTIALS | ||
332 | -------------------------- | ||
333 | |||
334 | A task being able to alter only its own credentials permits the current process | ||
335 | to read or replace its own credentials without the need for any form of locking | ||
336 | - which simplifies things greatly. It can just call: | ||
337 | |||
338 | const struct cred *current_cred() | ||
339 | |||
340 | to get a pointer to its credentials structure, and it doesn't have to release | ||
341 | it afterwards. | ||
342 | |||
343 | There are convenience wrappers for retrieving specific aspects of a task's | ||
344 | credentials (the value is simply returned in each case): | ||
345 | |||
346 | uid_t current_uid(void) Current's real UID | ||
347 | gid_t current_gid(void) Current's real GID | ||
348 | uid_t current_euid(void) Current's effective UID | ||
349 | gid_t current_egid(void) Current's effective GID | ||
350 | uid_t current_fsuid(void) Current's file access UID | ||
351 | gid_t current_fsgid(void) Current's file access GID | ||
352 | kernel_cap_t current_cap(void) Current's effective capabilities | ||
353 | void *current_security(void) Current's LSM security pointer | ||
354 | struct user_struct *current_user(void) Current's user account | ||
355 | |||
356 | There are also convenience wrappers for retrieving specific associated pairs of | ||
357 | a task's credentials: | ||
358 | |||
359 | void current_uid_gid(uid_t *, gid_t *); | ||
360 | void current_euid_egid(uid_t *, gid_t *); | ||
361 | void current_fsuid_fsgid(uid_t *, gid_t *); | ||
362 | |||
363 | which return these pairs of values through their arguments after retrieving | ||
364 | them from the current task's credentials. | ||
365 | |||
366 | |||
367 | In addition, there is a function for obtaining a reference on the current | ||
368 | process's current set of credentials: | ||
369 | |||
370 | const struct cred *get_current_cred(void); | ||
371 | |||
372 | and functions for getting references to one of the credentials that don't | ||
373 | actually live in struct cred: | ||
374 | |||
375 | struct user_struct *get_current_user(void); | ||
376 | struct group_info *get_current_groups(void); | ||
377 | |||
378 | which get references to the current process's user accounting structure and | ||
379 | supplementary groups list respectively. | ||
380 | |||
381 | Once a reference has been obtained, it must be released with put_cred(), | ||
382 | free_uid() or put_group_info() as appropriate. | ||
383 | |||
384 | |||
385 | ACCESSING ANOTHER TASK'S CREDENTIALS | ||
386 | ------------------------------------ | ||
387 | |||
388 | Whilst a task may access its own credentials without the need for locking, the | ||
389 | same is not true of a task wanting to access another task's credentials. It | ||
390 | must use the RCU read lock and rcu_dereference(). | ||
391 | |||
392 | The rcu_dereference() is wrapped by: | ||
393 | |||
394 | const struct cred *__task_cred(struct task_struct *task); | ||
395 | |||
396 | This should be used inside the RCU read lock, as in the following example: | ||
397 | |||
398 | void foo(struct task_struct *t, struct foo_data *f) | ||
399 | { | ||
400 | const struct cred *tcred; | ||
401 | ... | ||
402 | rcu_read_lock(); | ||
403 | tcred = __task_cred(t); | ||
404 | f->uid = tcred->uid; | ||
405 | f->gid = tcred->gid; | ||
406 | f->groups = get_group_info(tcred->groups); | ||
407 | rcu_read_unlock(); | ||
408 | ... | ||
409 | } | ||
410 | |||
411 | A function need not get RCU read lock to use __task_cred() if it is holding a | ||
412 | spinlock at the time as this implicitly holds the RCU read lock. | ||
413 | |||
414 | Should it be necessary to hold another task's credentials for a long period of | ||
415 | time, and possibly to sleep whilst doing so, then the caller should get a | ||
416 | reference on them using: | ||
417 | |||
418 | const struct cred *get_task_cred(struct task_struct *task); | ||
419 | |||
420 | This does all the RCU magic inside of it. The caller must call put_cred() on | ||
421 | the credentials so obtained when they're finished with. | ||
422 | |||
423 | There are a couple of convenience functions to access bits of another task's | ||
424 | credentials, hiding the RCU magic from the caller: | ||
425 | |||
426 | uid_t task_uid(task) Task's real UID | ||
427 | uid_t task_euid(task) Task's effective UID | ||
428 | |||
429 | If the caller is holding a spinlock or the RCU read lock at the time anyway, | ||
430 | then: | ||
431 | |||
432 | __task_cred(task)->uid | ||
433 | __task_cred(task)->euid | ||
434 | |||
435 | should be used instead. Similarly, if multiple aspects of a task's credentials | ||
436 | need to be accessed, RCU read lock or a spinlock should be used, __task_cred() | ||
437 | called, the result stored in a temporary pointer and then the credential | ||
438 | aspects called from that before dropping the lock. This prevents the | ||
439 | potentially expensive RCU magic from being invoked multiple times. | ||
440 | |||
441 | Should some other single aspect of another task's credentials need to be | ||
442 | accessed, then this can be used: | ||
443 | |||
444 | task_cred_xxx(task, member) | ||
445 | |||
446 | where 'member' is a non-pointer member of the cred struct. For instance: | ||
447 | |||
448 | uid_t task_cred_xxx(task, suid); | ||
449 | |||
450 | will retrieve 'struct cred::suid' from the task, doing the appropriate RCU | ||
451 | magic. This may not be used for pointer members as what they point to may | ||
452 | disappear the moment the RCU read lock is dropped. | ||
453 | |||
454 | |||
455 | ALTERING CREDENTIALS | ||
456 | -------------------- | ||
457 | |||
458 | As previously mentioned, a task may only alter its own credentials, and may not | ||
459 | alter those of another task. This means that it doesn't need to use any | ||
460 | locking to alter its own credentials. | ||
461 | |||
462 | To alter the current process's credentials, a function should first prepare a | ||
463 | new set of credentials by calling: | ||
464 | |||
465 | struct cred *prepare_creds(void); | ||
466 | |||
467 | this locks current->cred_replace_mutex and then allocates and constructs a | ||
468 | duplicate of the current process's credentials, returning with the mutex still | ||
469 | held if successful. It returns NULL if not successful (out of memory). | ||
470 | |||
471 | The mutex prevents ptrace() from altering the ptrace state of a process whilst | ||
472 | security checks on credentials construction and changing is taking place as | ||
473 | the ptrace state may alter the outcome, particularly in the case of execve(). | ||
474 | |||
475 | The new credentials set should be altered appropriately, and any security | ||
476 | checks and hooks done. Both the current and the proposed sets of credentials | ||
477 | are available for this purpose as current_cred() will return the current set | ||
478 | still at this point. | ||
479 | |||
480 | |||
481 | When the credential set is ready, it should be committed to the current process | ||
482 | by calling: | ||
483 | |||
484 | int commit_creds(struct cred *new); | ||
485 | |||
486 | This will alter various aspects of the credentials and the process, giving the | ||
487 | LSM a chance to do likewise, then it will use rcu_assign_pointer() to actually | ||
488 | commit the new credentials to current->cred, it will release | ||
489 | current->cred_replace_mutex to allow ptrace() to take place, and it will notify | ||
490 | the scheduler and others of the changes. | ||
491 | |||
492 | This function is guaranteed to return 0, so that it can be tail-called at the | ||
493 | end of such functions as sys_setresuid(). | ||
494 | |||
495 | Note that this function consumes the caller's reference to the new credentials. | ||
496 | The caller should _not_ call put_cred() on the new credentials afterwards. | ||
497 | |||
498 | Furthermore, once this function has been called on a new set of credentials, | ||
499 | those credentials may _not_ be changed further. | ||
500 | |||
501 | |||
502 | Should the security checks fail or some other error occur after prepare_creds() | ||
503 | has been called, then the following function should be invoked: | ||
504 | |||
505 | void abort_creds(struct cred *new); | ||
506 | |||
507 | This releases the lock on current->cred_replace_mutex that prepare_creds() got | ||
508 | and then releases the new credentials. | ||
509 | |||
510 | |||
511 | A typical credentials alteration function would look something like this: | ||
512 | |||
513 | int alter_suid(uid_t suid) | ||
514 | { | ||
515 | struct cred *new; | ||
516 | int ret; | ||
517 | |||
518 | new = prepare_creds(); | ||
519 | if (!new) | ||
520 | return -ENOMEM; | ||
521 | |||
522 | new->suid = suid; | ||
523 | ret = security_alter_suid(new); | ||
524 | if (ret < 0) { | ||
525 | abort_creds(new); | ||
526 | return ret; | ||
527 | } | ||
528 | |||
529 | return commit_creds(new); | ||
530 | } | ||
531 | |||
532 | |||
533 | MANAGING CREDENTIALS | ||
534 | -------------------- | ||
535 | |||
536 | There are some functions to help manage credentials: | ||
537 | |||
538 | (*) void put_cred(const struct cred *cred); | ||
539 | |||
540 | This releases a reference to the given set of credentials. If the | ||
541 | reference count reaches zero, the credentials will be scheduled for | ||
542 | destruction by the RCU system. | ||
543 | |||
544 | (*) const struct cred *get_cred(const struct cred *cred); | ||
545 | |||
546 | This gets a reference on a live set of credentials, returning a pointer to | ||
547 | that set of credentials. | ||
548 | |||
549 | (*) struct cred *get_new_cred(struct cred *cred); | ||
550 | |||
551 | This gets a reference on a set of credentials that is under construction | ||
552 | and is thus still mutable, returning a pointer to that set of credentials. | ||
553 | |||
554 | |||
555 | ===================== | ||
556 | OPEN FILE CREDENTIALS | ||
557 | ===================== | ||
558 | |||
559 | When a new file is opened, a reference is obtained on the opening task's | ||
560 | credentials and this is attached to the file struct as 'f_cred' in place of | ||
561 | 'f_uid' and 'f_gid'. Code that used to access file->f_uid and file->f_gid | ||
562 | should now access file->f_cred->fsuid and file->f_cred->fsgid. | ||
563 | |||
564 | It is safe to access f_cred without the use of RCU or locking because the | ||
565 | pointer will not change over the lifetime of the file struct, and nor will the | ||
566 | contents of the cred struct pointed to, barring the exceptions listed above | ||
567 | (see the Task Credentials section). | ||
568 | |||
569 | |||
570 | ======================================= | ||
571 | OVERRIDING THE VFS'S USE OF CREDENTIALS | ||
572 | ======================================= | ||
573 | |||
574 | Under some circumstances it is desirable to override the credentials used by | ||
575 | the VFS, and that can be done by calling into such as vfs_mkdir() with a | ||
576 | different set of credentials. This is done in the following places: | ||
577 | |||
578 | (*) sys_faccessat(). | ||
579 | |||
580 | (*) do_coredump(). | ||
581 | |||
582 | (*) nfs4recover.c. | ||