[lxc-devel] Unprivileged setns

Stéphane Graber stgraber at ubuntu.com
Mon Jan 20 21:41:14 UTC 2014


On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 04:19:33PM -0500, S.Çağlar Onur wrote:
> Hi Stéphane,
> 
> On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 4:06 PM, S.Çağlar Onur <caglar at 10ur.org> wrote:
> > Hi Stéphane,
> >
> > On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 3:08 PM, Stéphane Graber <stgraber at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> >> Hey everyone,
> >>
> >> So I spent some time this morning trying to figure out if setns to
> >> unprivileged containers was even possible.
> >>
> >> The good news is that it is, the bad news is that setns back to the
> >> original namespace isn't allowed.
> >>
> >> So in practice, with this patch[0] I can get lxc-info to show
> >> information from an unprivileged containers like so:
> >>
> >> stgraber at castiana:~/Desktop$ lxc-info -n p1
> >> Name:           p1
> >> State:          RUNNING
> >> PID:            24704
> >> lxc_container: Operation not permitted - failed to setns
> >> lxc_container: Operation not permitted - failed to setns
> >> IP:             10.0.3.124
> >> IP:             10.0.4.1
> >> IP:             2607:f2c0:f00f:2751:5c41:a8fd:1169:6041
> >> IP:             2607:f2c0:f00f:2751:ac15:54ff:fed5:8b4a
> >
> > Cool, I was trying to do the same this morning with no luck. I just
> > tried your patch to see what will happen and unfortunately it's pretty
> > much the same error that I was getting.
> >
> > I'm on saucy with trusy kernel and now started to wonder whether this
> > could be related with the libc version that I'm using or something
> > else. Here is what happens with your patch applied (with two
> > additional lines for writing the function name for debugging).
> 
> Hmm, it looks like go runtime is causing some trouble because calling
> the get_ips directly via C API works as expected.

Good to hear it's just a binding issue and not some very weird and
twisted userspace library problem :)

Btw, I just got lxc-attach and attach() in the API to work with
unprivileged containers though I have to track down and fix a cgroup
problem before I send the patch to the mailinglist (attach works but not
if you have it join the cgroup too...).


Now for get_ips and get_interfaces, based on Eric's reply, there's no
way we can do it by just tweaking our current implementation as even
when keeping an open fd to the old namespace, setns will fail...

I had a thought of instead adding those two functions to the monitor API
and have lxc-start query those values for us but unfortunately lxc-start
is also outside the network namespace so would also have to setns and
would also be stuck with no way to revert back to the original
namespace.

So it seems like our only way out is to have a function which opens a
communication fd (or something), forks, switches namespace, does what we
want and returns the data over the fd. The same function would obviously
work with both privileged and unprivileged containers, so we probably
shouldn't make that a special case for unprivileged containers and just
consistently get rid of in-process setns calls (all the attach functions
already do it in a child).


> 
> [caglar at oOo:~/Projects/lxc-c] cat ip.c
> #include <stdio.h>
> #include <stdlib.h>
> 
> #include <lxc/lxccontainer.h>
> 
> int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
>     int i;
>     struct lxc_container *c;
> 
>     c = lxc_container_new("rubik", NULL);
> 
>     char **addresses = c->get_ips(c, NULL, NULL, 0);
>     if (addresses) {
>         char *address;
>         i = 0;
>         while (addresses[i]) {
>             address = addresses[i];
>             printf("IP: %s\n", address);
>             i++;
>         }
>     }
> 
>     lxc_container_put(c);
> 
>     return 0;
> }
> 
> [caglar at oOo:~/Projects/lxc-c] gcc ip.c -llxc -o ip
> [caglar at oOo:~/Projects/lxc-c] ./ip
> lxc_container: enter_to_ns
> lxc_container: exit_from_ns
> lxc_container: Operation not permitted - failed to setns CLONE_NEWUSER
> lxc_container: Operation not permitted - failed to setns CLONE_NEWNET
> IP: 10.0.3.153
> [caglar at oOo:~/Projects/lxc-c]
> 
> 
> > [caglar at oOo:~/go/src/github.com/caglar10ur/lxc/examples] ./list
> > You are using LXC as an unprivileged user. Some functionality may not work.
> >
> > 2014/01/20 16:03:42 Defined containers:
> > 2014/01/20 16:03:42 rubik (STOPPED)
> > 2014/01/20 16:03:42
> > 2014/01/20 16:03:42 Active containers:
> > 2014/01/20 16:03:42
> > 2014/01/20 16:03:42 Active and Defined containers:
> >
> > [caglar at oOo:~/go/src/github.com/caglar10ur/lxc/examples] ./start
> > You are using LXC as an unprivileged user. Some functionality may not work.
> >
> > 2014/01/20 16:03:43 Starting the container...
> >
> > [caglar at oOo:~/go/src/github.com/caglar10ur/lxc/examples] ./list
> > You are using LXC as an unprivileged user. Some functionality may not work.
> >
> > 2014/01/20 16:03:44 Defined containers:
> > 2014/01/20 16:03:44 rubik (RUNNING)
> > 2014/01/20 16:03:44
> > 2014/01/20 16:03:44 Active containers:
> > 2014/01/20 16:03:44 rubik (RUNNING)
> > 2014/01/20 16:03:44
> > 2014/01/20 16:03:44 Active and Defined containers:
> > 2014/01/20 16:03:44 rubik (RUNNING)
> >
> > [caglar at oOo:~/go/src/github.com/caglar10ur/lxc/examples] ./ipaddress
> > You are using LXC as an unprivileged user. Some functionality may not work.
> >
> > 2014/01/20 16:03:47 IPAddress("lo")
> > lxc_container: enter_to_ns
> > lxc_container: Invalid argument - failed to setns CLONE_NEWUSER
> > lxc_container: exit_from_ns
> > lxc_container: Invalid argument - failed to setns CLONE_NEWUSER
> > lxc_container: Operation not permitted - failed to setns CLONE_NEWNET
> > lxc_container: exit_from_ns
> > lxc_container: Bad file descriptor - failed to setns CLONE_NEWUSER
> > lxc_container: Bad file descriptor - failed to setns CLONE_NEWNET
> > 2014/01/20 16:03:47 ERROR: getting IP address on the interface lo of
> > the container "rubik" failed
> >
> > [caglar at oOo:~/go/src/github.com/caglar10ur/lxc/examples] sudo
> > ./ipaddress -lxcpath=/home/caglar/.local/share/lxc
> > 2014/01/20 16:05:37 IPAddress("lo")
> > lxc_container: enter_to_ns
> > lxc_container: exit_from_ns
> > 2014/01/20 16:05:37 0) 127.0.0.1
> > 2014/01/20 16:05:37 1) ::1
> > 2014/01/20 16:05:37 IPAddresses()
> > lxc_container: enter_to_ns
> > lxc_container: exit_from_ns
> > 2014/01/20 16:05:37 0) 10.0.3.153
> > 2014/01/20 16:05:37 IPv4Addresses()
> > lxc_container: enter_to_ns
> > lxc_container: exit_from_ns
> > 2014/01/20 16:05:37 0) 10.0.3.153
> > 2014/01/20 16:05:37 IPv6Addresses()
> > lxc_container: enter_to_ns
> > lxc_container: exit_from_ns
> > 2014/01/20 16:05:37 ERROR: getting IPv6 addresses of the container
> > "rubik" failed
> >
> >
> >>
> >> The problem obviously comes from those two error messages which say that
> >> setns back to the original namespace failed.
> >>
> >> I can't think of a nice way around this particular limitation nor am I
> >> convinced that there is any safe way to fix that at the kernel level.
> >> (CCing Eric in case there's something I missed)
> >>
> >> The obvious thing we could do is instead of doing the setns calls in
> >> process, instead fork a child, have it do the setns and send the result
> >> of the command back to the original caller. However doing that is likely
> >> going to take a bit more time than I have available right now, so if
> >> someone's interested, that'd be a great thing to have for 1.0.
> >>
> >> [0] http://paste.ubuntu.com/6787869/
> >>
> >> --
> >> Stéphane Graber
> >> Ubuntu developer
> >> http://www.ubuntu.com
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> lxc-devel mailing list
> >> lxc-devel at lists.linuxcontainers.org
> >> http://lists.linuxcontainers.org/listinfo/lxc-devel
> >>
> >
> > Best,
> > --
> > S.Çağlar Onur <caglar at 10ur.org>
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> S.Çağlar Onur <caglar at 10ur.org>
> _______________________________________________
> lxc-devel mailing list
> lxc-devel at lists.linuxcontainers.org
> http://lists.linuxcontainers.org/listinfo/lxc-devel

-- 
Stéphane Graber
Ubuntu developer
http://www.ubuntu.com
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