kernel/linux.git/include/linux/user_namespace.h, branch v6.19.11

nstree: add listns()

2025-11-03T16:41:18+00:00

Add a new listns() system call that allows userspace to iterate through namespaces in the system. This provides a programmatic interface to discover and inspect namespaces, enhancing existing namespace apis. Currently, there is no direct way for userspace to enumerate namespaces in the system. Applications must resort to scanning /proc//ns/ across all processes, which is: 1. Inefficient - requires iterating over all processes 2. Incomplete - misses inactive namespaces that aren't attached to any running process but are kept alive by file descriptors, bind mounts, or parent namespace references 3. Permission-heavy - requires access to /proc for many processes 4. No ordering or ownership. 5. No filtering per namespace type: Must always iterate and check all namespaces. The list goes on. The listns() system call solves these problems by providing direct kernel-level enumeration of namespaces. It is similar to listmount() but obviously tailored to namespaces. /* * @req: Pointer to struct ns_id_req specifying search parameters * @ns_ids: User buffer to receive namespace IDs * @nr_ns_ids: Size of ns_ids buffer (maximum number of IDs to return) * @flags: Reserved for future use (must be 0) */ ssize_t listns(const struct ns_id_req *req, u64 *ns_ids, size_t nr_ns_ids, unsigned int flags); Returns: - On success: Number of namespace IDs written to ns_ids - On error: Negative error code /* * @size: Structure size * @ns_id: Starting point for iteration; use 0 for first call, then * use the last returned ID for subsequent calls to paginate * @ns_type: Bitmask of namespace types to include (from enum ns_type): * 0: Return all namespace types * MNT_NS: Mount namespaces * NET_NS: Network namespaces * USER_NS: User namespaces * etc. Can be OR'd together * @user_ns_id: Filter results to namespaces owned by this user namespace: * 0: Return all namespaces (subject to permission checks) * LISTNS_CURRENT_USER: Namespaces owned by caller's user namespace * Other value: Namespaces owned by the specified user namespace ID */ struct ns_id_req { __u32 size; /* sizeof(struct ns_id_req) */ __u32 spare; /* Reserved, must be 0 */ __u64 ns_id; /* Last seen namespace ID (for pagination) */ __u32 ns_type; /* Filter by namespace type(s) */ __u32 spare2; /* Reserved, must be 0 */ __u64 user_ns_id; /* Filter by owning user namespace */ }; Example 1: List all namespaces void list_all_namespaces(void) { struct ns_id_req req = { .size = sizeof(req), .ns_id = 0, /* Start from beginning */ .ns_type = 0, /* All types */ .user_ns_id = 0, /* All user namespaces */ }; uint64_t ids[100]; ssize_t ret; printf("All namespaces in the system:\n"); do { ret = listns(&req, ids, 100, 0); if (ret < 0) { perror("listns"); break; } for (ssize_t i = 0; i < ret; i++) printf(" Namespace ID: %llu\n", (unsigned long long)ids[i]); /* Continue from last seen ID */ if (ret > 0) req.ns_id = ids[ret - 1]; } while (ret == 100); /* Buffer was full, more may exist */ } Example 2: List network namespaces only void list_network_namespaces(void) { struct ns_id_req req = { .size = sizeof(req), .ns_id = 0, .ns_type = NET_NS, /* Only network namespaces */ .user_ns_id = 0, }; uint64_t ids[100]; ssize_t ret; ret = listns(&req, ids, 100, 0); if (ret < 0) { perror("listns"); return; } printf("Network namespaces: %zd found\n", ret); for (ssize_t i = 0; i < ret; i++) printf(" netns ID: %llu\n", (unsigned long long)ids[i]); } Example 3: List namespaces owned by current user namespace void list_owned_namespaces(void) { struct ns_id_req req = { .size = sizeof(req), .ns_id = 0, .ns_type = 0, /* All types */ .user_ns_id = LISTNS_CURRENT_USER, /* Current userns */ }; uint64_t ids[100]; ssize_t ret; ret = listns(&req, ids, 100, 0); if (ret < 0) { perror("listns"); return; } printf("Namespaces owned by my user namespace: %zd\n", ret); for (ssize_t i = 0; i < ret; i++) printf(" ns ID: %llu\n", (unsigned long long)ids[i]); } Example 4: List multiple namespace types void list_network_and_mount_namespaces(void) { struct ns_id_req req = { .size = sizeof(req), .ns_id = 0, .ns_type = NET_NS | MNT_NS, /* Network and mount */ .user_ns_id = 0, }; uint64_t ids[100]; ssize_t ret; ret = listns(&req, ids, 100, 0); printf("Network and mount namespaces: %zd found\n", ret); } Example 5: Pagination through large namespace sets void list_all_with_pagination(void) { struct ns_id_req req = { .size = sizeof(req), .ns_id = 0, .ns_type = 0, .user_ns_id = 0, }; uint64_t ids[50]; size_t total = 0; ssize_t ret; printf("Enumerating all namespaces with pagination:\n"); while (1) { ret = listns(&req, ids, 50, 0); if (ret < 0) { perror("listns"); break; } if (ret == 0) break; /* No more namespaces */ total += ret; printf(" Batch: %zd namespaces\n", ret); /* Last ID in this batch becomes start of next batch */ req.ns_id = ids[ret - 1]; if (ret < 50) break; /* Partial batch = end of results */ } printf("Total: %zu namespaces\n", total); } Permission Model listns() respects namespace isolation and capabilities: (1) Global listing (user_ns_id = 0): - Requires CAP_SYS_ADMIN in the namespace's owning user namespace - OR the namespace must be in the caller's namespace context (e.g., a namespace the caller is currently using) - User namespaces additionally allow listing if the caller has CAP_SYS_ADMIN in that user namespace itself (2) Owner-filtered listing (user_ns_id != 0): - Requires CAP_SYS_ADMIN in the specified owner user namespace - OR the namespace must be in the caller's namespace context - This allows unprivileged processes to enumerate namespaces they own (3) Visibility: - Only "active" namespaces are listed - A namespace is active if it has a non-zero __ns_ref_active count - This includes namespaces used by running processes, held by open file descriptors, or kept active by bind mounts - Inactive namespaces (kept alive only by internal kernel references) are not visible via listns() Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20251029-work-namespace-nstree-listns-v4-19-2e6f823ebdc0@kernel.org Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner

user: port to ns_ref_*() helpers

2025-09-19T14:22:37+00:00

Stop accessing ns.count directly. Reviewed-by: Jan Kara Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner

ns: add to__ns() to respective headers

2025-09-19T12:26:16+00:00

Every namespace type has a container_of(ns, , ns) static inline function that is currently not exposed in the header. So we have a bunch of places that open-code it via container_of(). Move it to the headers so we can use it directly. Reviewed-by: Aleksa Sarai Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner

ucount: use rcuref_t for reference counting

2025-03-17T05:30:50+00:00

Use rcuref_t for reference counting. This eliminates the cmpxchg loop in the get and put path. This also eliminates the need to acquire the lock in the put path because once the final user returns the reference, it can no longer be obtained anymore. Use rcuref_t for reference counting. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20250203150525.456525-5-bigeasy@linutronix.de Signed-off-by: Sebastian Andrzej Siewior Reviewed-by: Paul E. McKenney Cc: Thomas Gleixner Cc: Boqun Feng Cc: Joel Fernandes Cc: Josh Triplett Cc: Lai jiangshan Cc: Mathieu Desnoyers Cc: Mengen Sun Cc: Steven Rostedt Cc: "Uladzislau Rezki (Sony)" Cc: YueHong Wu Cc: Zqiang Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

ucount: use RCU for ucounts lookups

2025-03-17T05:30:50+00:00

The ucounts element is looked up under ucounts_lock. This can be optimized by using RCU for a lockless lookup and return and element if the reference can be obtained. Replace hlist_head with hlist_nulls_head which is RCU compatible. Let find_ucounts() search for the required item within a RCU section and return the item if a reference could be obtained. This means alloc_ucounts() will always return an element (unless the memory allocation failed). Let put_ucounts() RCU free the element if the reference counter dropped to zero. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20250203150525.456525-4-bigeasy@linutronix.de Signed-off-by: Sebastian Andrzej Siewior Reviewed-by: Paul E. McKenney Cc: Thomas Gleixner Cc: Boqun Feng Cc: Joel Fernandes Cc: Josh Triplett Cc: Lai jiangshan Cc: Mathieu Desnoyers Cc: Mengen Sun Cc: Steven Rostedt Cc: "Uladzislau Rezki (Sony)" Cc: YueHong Wu Cc: Zqiang Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

signal: restore the override_rlimit logic

2024-11-07T22:14:59+00:00

Prior to commit d64696905554 ("Reimplement RLIMIT_SIGPENDING on top of ucounts") UCOUNT_RLIMIT_SIGPENDING rlimit was not enforced for a class of signals. However now it's enforced unconditionally, even if override_rlimit is set. This behavior change caused production issues. For example, if the limit is reached and a process receives a SIGSEGV signal, sigqueue_alloc fails to allocate the necessary resources for the signal delivery, preventing the signal from being delivered with siginfo. This prevents the process from correctly identifying the fault address and handling the error. From the user-space perspective, applications are unaware that the limit has been reached and that the siginfo is effectively 'corrupted'. This can lead to unpredictable behavior and crashes, as we observed with java applications. Fix this by passing override_rlimit into inc_rlimit_get_ucounts() and skip the comparison to max there if override_rlimit is set. This effectively restores the old behavior. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20241104195419.3962584-1-roman.gushchin@linux.dev Fixes: d64696905554 ("Reimplement RLIMIT_SIGPENDING on top of ucounts") Signed-off-by: Roman Gushchin Co-developed-by: Andrei Vagin Signed-off-by: Andrei Vagin Acked-by: Oleg Nesterov Acked-by: Alexey Gladkov Cc: Kees Cook Cc: "Eric W. Biederman" Cc: Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

uidgid: make sure we fit into one cacheline

2024-09-12T10:16:09+00:00

When I expanded uidgid mappings I intended for a struct uid_gid_map to fit into a single cacheline on x86 as they tend to be pretty performance sensitive (idmapped mounts etc). But a 4 byte hole was added that brought it over 64 bytes. Fix that by adding the static extent array and the extent counter into a substruct. C's type punning for unions guarantees that we can access ->nr_extents even if the last written to member wasn't within the same object. This is also what we rely on in struct_group() and friends. This of course relies on non-strict aliasing which we don't do. 99) If the member used to read the contents of a union object is not the same as the member last used to store a value in the object, the appropriate part of the object representation of the value is reinterpreted as an object representation in the new type as described in 6.2.6 (a process sometimes called "type punning"). Link: https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n2310.pdf Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20240910-work-uid_gid_map-v1-1-e6bc761363ed@kernel.org Reviewed-by: Jeff Layton Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner

binfmt_misc: enable sandboxed mounts

2023-10-11T15:46:01+00:00

Enable unprivileged sandboxes to create their own binfmt_misc mounts. This is based on Laurent's work in [1] but has been significantly reworked to fix various issues we identified in earlier versions. While binfmt_misc can currently only be mounted in the initial user namespace, binary types registered in this binfmt_misc instance are available to all sandboxes (Either by having them installed in the sandbox or by registering the binary type with the F flag causing the interpreter to be opened right away). So binfmt_misc binary types are already delegated to sandboxes implicitly. However, while a sandbox has access to all registered binary types in binfmt_misc a sandbox cannot currently register its own binary types in binfmt_misc. This has prevented various use-cases some of which were already outlined in [1] but we have a range of issues associated with this (cf. [3]-[5] below which are just a small sample). Extend binfmt_misc to be mountable in non-initial user namespaces. Similar to other filesystem such as nfsd, mqueue, and sunrpc we use keyed superblock management. The key determines whether we need to create a new superblock or can reuse an already existing one. We use the user namespace of the mount as key. This means a new binfmt_misc superblock is created once per user namespace creation. Subsequent mounts of binfmt_misc in the same user namespace will mount the same binfmt_misc instance. We explicitly do not create a new binfmt_misc superblock on every binfmt_misc mount as the semantics for load_misc_binary() line up with the keying model. This also allows us to retrieve the relevant binfmt_misc instance based on the caller's user namespace which can be done in a simple (bounded to 32 levels) loop. Similar to the current binfmt_misc semantics allowing access to the binary types in the initial binfmt_misc instance we do allow sandboxes access to their parent's binfmt_misc mounts if they do not have created a separate binfmt_misc instance. Overall, this will unblock the use-cases mentioned below and in general will also allow to support and harden execution of another architecture's binaries in tight sandboxes. For instance, using the unshare binary it possible to start a chroot of another architecture and configure the binfmt_misc interpreter without being root to run the binaries in this chroot and without requiring the host to modify its binary type handlers. Henning had already posted a few experiments in the cover letter at [1]. But here's an additional example where an unprivileged container registers qemu-user-static binary handlers for various binary types in its separate binfmt_misc mount and is then seamlessly able to start containers with a different architecture without affecting the host: root [lxc monitor] /var/snap/lxd/common/lxd/containers f1 1000000 \_ /sbin/init 1000000 \_ /lib/systemd/systemd-journald 1000000 \_ /lib/systemd/systemd-udevd 1000100 \_ /lib/systemd/systemd-networkd 1000101 \_ /lib/systemd/systemd-resolved 1000000 \_ /usr/sbin/cron -f 1000103 \_ /usr/bin/dbus-daemon --system --address=systemd: --nofork --nopidfile --systemd-activation --syslog-only 1000000 \_ /usr/bin/python3 /usr/bin/networkd-dispatcher --run-startup-triggers 1000104 \_ /usr/sbin/rsyslogd -n -iNONE 1000000 \_ /lib/systemd/systemd-logind 1000000 \_ /sbin/agetty -o -p -- \u --noclear --keep-baud console 115200,38400,9600 vt220 1000107 \_ dnsmasq --conf-file=/dev/null -u lxc-dnsmasq --strict-order --bind-interfaces --pid-file=/run/lxc/dnsmasq.pid --liste 1000000 \_ [lxc monitor] /var/lib/lxc f1-s390x 1100000 \_ /usr/bin/qemu-s390x-static /sbin/init 1100000 \_ /usr/bin/qemu-s390x-static /lib/systemd/systemd-journald 1100000 \_ /usr/bin/qemu-s390x-static /usr/sbin/cron -f 1100103 \_ /usr/bin/qemu-s390x-static /usr/bin/dbus-daemon --system --address=systemd: --nofork --nopidfile --systemd-ac 1100000 \_ /usr/bin/qemu-s390x-static /usr/bin/python3 /usr/bin/networkd-dispatcher --run-startup-triggers 1100104 \_ /usr/bin/qemu-s390x-static /usr/sbin/rsyslogd -n -iNONE 1100000 \_ /usr/bin/qemu-s390x-static /lib/systemd/systemd-logind 1100000 \_ /usr/bin/qemu-s390x-static /sbin/agetty -o -p -- \u --noclear --keep-baud console 115200,38400,9600 vt220 1100000 \_ /usr/bin/qemu-s390x-static /sbin/agetty -o -p -- \u --noclear --keep-baud pts/0 115200,38400,9600 vt220 1100000 \_ /usr/bin/qemu-s390x-static /sbin/agetty -o -p -- \u --noclear --keep-baud pts/1 115200,38400,9600 vt220 1100000 \_ /usr/bin/qemu-s390x-static /sbin/agetty -o -p -- \u --noclear --keep-baud pts/2 115200,38400,9600 vt220 1100000 \_ /usr/bin/qemu-s390x-static /sbin/agetty -o -p -- \u --noclear --keep-baud pts/3 115200,38400,9600 vt220 1100000 \_ /usr/bin/qemu-s390x-static /lib/systemd/systemd-udevd [1]: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20191216091220.465626-1-laurent@vivier.eu [2]: https://discuss.linuxcontainers.org/t/binfmt-misc-permission-denied [3]: https://discuss.linuxcontainers.org/t/lxd-binfmt-support-for-qemu-static-interpreters [4]: https://discuss.linuxcontainers.org/t/3-1-0-binfmt-support-service-in-unprivileged-guest-requires-write-access-on-hosts-proc-sys-fs-binfmt-misc [5]: https://discuss.linuxcontainers.org/t/qemu-user-static-not-working-4-11 Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20191216091220.465626-2-laurent@vivier.eu (origin) Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20211028103114.2849140-2-brauner@kernel.org (v1) Cc: Sargun Dhillon Cc: Serge Hallyn Cc: Jann Horn Cc: Henning Schild Cc: Andrei Vagin Cc: Al Viro Cc: Laurent Vivier Cc: linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org Signed-off-by: Laurent Vivier Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner Signed-off-by: Kees Cook --- /* v2 */ - Serge Hallyn : - Use GFP_KERNEL_ACCOUNT for userspace triggered allocations when a new binary type handler is registered. - Christian Brauner : - Switch authorship to me. I refused to do that earlier even though Laurent said I should do so because I think it's genuinely bad form. But by now I have changed so many things that it'd be unfair to blame Laurent for any potential bugs in here. - Add more comments that explain what's going on. - Rename functions while changing them to better reflect what they are doing to make the code easier to understand. - In the first version when a specific binary type handler was removed either through a write to the entry's file or all binary type handlers were removed by a write to the binfmt_misc mount's status file all cleanup work happened during inode eviction. That includes removal of the relevant entries from entry list. While that works fine I disliked that model after thinking about it for a bit. Because it means that there was a window were someone has already removed a or all binary handlers but they could still be safely reached from load_misc_binary() when it has managed to take the read_lock() on the entries list while inode eviction was already happening. Again, that perfectly benign but it's cleaner to remove the binary handler from the list immediately meaning that ones the write to then entry's file or the binfmt_misc status file returns the binary type cannot be executed anymore. That gives stronger guarantees to the user.

ucounts: Split rlimit and ucount values and max values

2022-05-18T23:24:57+00:00

Since the semantics of maximum rlimit values are different, it would be better not to mix ucount and rlimit values. This will prevent the error of using inc_count/dec_ucount for rlimit parameters. This patch also renames the functions to emphasize the lack of connection between rlimit and ucount. v3: - Fix BUG:KASAN:use-after-free_in_dec_ucount. v2: - Fix the array-index-out-of-bounds that was found by the lkp project. Reported-by: kernel test robot Signed-off-by: Alexey Gladkov Signed-off-by: Eric W. Biederman Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20220518171730.l65lmnnjtnxnftpq@example.org Signed-off-by: Eric W. Biederman

ucounts: Fix signal ucount refcounting

2021-10-18T21:02:30+00:00

In commit fda31c50292a ("signal: avoid double atomic counter increments for user accounting") Linus made a clever optimization to how rlimits and the struct user_struct. Unfortunately that optimization does not work in the obvious way when moved to nested rlimits. The problem is that the last decrement of the per user namespace per user sigpending counter might also be the last decrement of the sigpending counter in the parent user namespace as well. Which means that simply freeing the leaf ucount in __free_sigqueue is not enough. Maintain the optimization and handle the tricky cases by introducing inc_rlimit_get_ucounts and dec_rlimit_put_ucounts. By moving the entire optimization into functions that perform all of the work it becomes possible to ensure that every level is handled properly. The new function inc_rlimit_get_ucounts returns 0 on failure to increment the ucount. This is different than inc_rlimit_ucounts which increments the ucounts and returns LONG_MAX if the ucount counter has exceeded it's maximum or it wrapped (to indicate the counter needs to decremented). I wish we had a single user to account all pending signals to across all of the threads of a process so this complexity was not necessary Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org Fixes: d64696905554 ("Reimplement RLIMIT_SIGPENDING on top of ucounts") v1: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/87mtnavszx.fsf_-_@disp2133 Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/87fssytizw.fsf_-_@disp2133 Reviewed-by: Alexey Gladkov Tested-by: Rune Kleveland Tested-by: Yu Zhao Tested-by: Jordan Glover Signed-off-by: "Eric W. Biederman"