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Christian Brauner 5d1f903f75 attr: block mode changes of symlinks
Changing the mode of symlinks is meaningless as the vfs doesn't take the
mode of a symlink into account during path lookup permission checking.

However, the vfs doesn't block mode changes on symlinks. This however,
has lead to an untenable mess roughly classifiable into the following
two categories:

(1) Filesystems that don't implement a i_op->setattr() for symlinks.

    Such filesystems may or may not know that without i_op->setattr()
    defined, notify_change() falls back to simple_setattr() causing the
    inode's mode in the inode cache to be changed.

    That's a generic issue as this will affect all non-size changing
    inode attributes including ownership changes.

    Example: afs

(2) Filesystems that fail with EOPNOTSUPP but change the mode of the
    symlink nonetheless.

    Some filesystems will happily update the mode of a symlink but still
    return EOPNOTSUPP. This is the biggest source of confusion for
    userspace.

    The EOPNOTSUPP in this case comes from POSIX ACLs. Specifically it
    comes from filesystems that call posix_acl_chmod(), e.g., btrfs via

        if (!err && attr->ia_valid & ATTR_MODE)
                err = posix_acl_chmod(idmap, dentry, inode->i_mode);

    Filesystems including btrfs don't implement i_op->set_acl() so
    posix_acl_chmod() will report EOPNOTSUPP.

    When posix_acl_chmod() is called, most filesystems will have
    finished updating the inode.

    Perversely, this has the consequences that this behavior may depend
    on two kconfig options and mount options:

    * CONFIG_POSIX_ACL={y,n}
    * CONFIG_${FSTYPE}_POSIX_ACL={y,n}
    * Opt_acl, Opt_noacl

    Example: btrfs, ext4, xfs

The only way to change the mode on a symlink currently involves abusing
an O_PATH file descriptor in the following manner:

        fd = openat(-1, "/path/to/link", O_CLOEXEC | O_PATH | O_NOFOLLOW);

        char path[PATH_MAX];
        snprintf(path, sizeof(path), "/proc/self/fd/%d", fd);
        chmod(path, 0000);

But for most major filesystems with POSIX ACL support such as btrfs,
ext4, ceph, tmpfs, xfs and others this will fail with EOPNOTSUPP with
the mode still updated due to the aforementioned posix_acl_chmod()
nonsense.

So, given that for all major filesystems this would fail with EOPNOTSUPP
and that both glibc (cf. [1]) and musl (cf. [2]) outright block mode
changes on symlinks we should just try and block mode changes on
symlinks directly in the vfs and have a clean break with this nonsense.

If this causes any regressions, we do the next best thing and fix up all
filesystems that do return EOPNOTSUPP with the mode updated to not call
posix_acl_chmod() on symlinks.

But as usual, let's try the clean cut solution first. It's a simple
patch that can be easily reverted. Not marking this for backport as I'll
do that manually if we're reasonably sure that this works and there are
no strong objections.

We could block this in chmod_common() but it's more appropriate to do it
notify_change() as it will also mean that we catch filesystems that
change symlink permissions explicitly or accidently.

Similar proposals were floated in the past as in [3] and [4] and again
recently in [5]. There's also a couple of bugs about this inconsistency
as in [6] and [7].

Link: https://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=blob;f=sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/fchmodat.c;h=99527a3727e44cb8661ee1f743068f108ec93979;hb=HEAD [1]
Link: https://git.musl-libc.org/cgit/musl/tree/src/stat/fchmodat.c [2]
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20200911065733.GA31579@infradead.org [3]
Link: https://sourceware.org/legacy-ml/libc-alpha/2020-02/msg00518.html [4]
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/87lefmbppo.fsf@oldenburg.str.redhat.com [5]
Link: https://sourceware.org/legacy-ml/libc-alpha/2020-02/msg00467.html [6]
Link: https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=14578#c17 [7]
Reviewed-by: Aleksa Sarai <cyphar@cyphar.com>
Reviewed-by: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org # please backport to all LTSes but not before v6.6-rc2 is tagged
Suggested-by: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
Suggested-by: Florian Weimer <fweimer@redhat.com>
Message-Id: <20230712-vfs-chmod-symlinks-v2-1-08cfb92b61dd@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner <brauner@kernel.org>
2023-07-14 09:48:58 +02:00
Documentation Fixes for pci_clean_master, error handling in driver inits, and various 2023-07-09 09:35:51 -07:00
LICENSES LICENSES: Add the copyleft-next-0.3.1 license 2022-11-08 15:44:01 +01:00
arch - Do FPU AP initialization on Xen PV too which got missed by the recent 2023-07-09 10:13:32 -07:00
block block-6.5-2023-07-03 2023-07-03 18:48:38 -07:00
certs KEYS: Add missing function documentation 2023-04-24 16:15:52 +03:00
crypto This update includes the following changes: 2023-06-30 21:27:13 -07:00
drivers Fixes for pci_clean_master, error handling in driver inits, and various 2023-07-09 09:35:51 -07:00
fs attr: block mode changes of symlinks 2023-07-14 09:48:58 +02:00
include dnotify: Pass argument of fcntl_dirnotify as int 2023-07-10 14:36:12 +02:00
init Kbuild updates for v6.5 2023-07-01 09:24:31 -07:00
io_uring io_uring-6.5-2023-07-03 2023-07-03 18:43:10 -07:00
ipc Merge branch 'work.namespace' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/viro/vfs 2023-02-24 19:20:07 -08:00
kernel dma-mapping fixes for Linux 6.5 2023-07-09 10:24:22 -07:00
lib 16 hotfixes. Six are cc:stable and the remainder address post-6.4 issues. 2023-07-08 14:30:25 -07:00
mm mm: lock newly mapped VMA with corrected ordering 2023-07-08 16:44:11 -07:00
net Including fixes from bluetooth, bpf and wireguard. 2023-07-05 15:44:45 -07:00
rust rust: error: `impl Debug` for `Error` with `errname()` integration 2023-06-13 01:24:42 +02:00
samples Including fixes from bluetooth, bpf and wireguard. 2023-07-05 15:44:45 -07:00
scripts A half-dozen late arriving docs patches. They are mostly fixes, but we 2023-07-06 22:15:38 -07:00
security + Bug Fixes 2023-07-07 09:55:31 -07:00
sound sound fixes for 6.5-rc1 2023-07-07 15:40:17 -07:00
tools perf tools changes and fixes for v6.5: 2nd batch 2023-07-08 10:21:51 -07:00
usr initramfs: Encode dependency on KBUILD_BUILD_TIMESTAMP 2023-06-06 17:54:49 +09:00
virt ARM64: 2023-07-03 15:32:22 -07:00
.clang-format iommu: Add for_each_group_device() 2023-05-23 08:15:51 +02:00
.cocciconfig
.get_maintainer.ignore get_maintainer: add Alan to .get_maintainer.ignore 2022-08-20 15:17:44 -07:00
.gitattributes .gitattributes: set diff driver for Rust source code files 2023-05-31 17:48:25 +02:00
.gitignore Revert ".gitignore: ignore *.cover and *.mbx" 2023-07-04 15:05:12 -07:00
.mailmap 16 hotfixes. Six are cc:stable and the remainder address post-6.4 issues. 2023-07-08 14:30:25 -07:00
.rustfmt.toml rust: add `.rustfmt.toml` 2022-09-28 09:02:20 +02:00
COPYING COPYING: state that all contributions really are covered by this file 2020-02-10 13:32:20 -08:00
CREDITS - Address -Wmissing-prototype warnings 2023-06-26 16:43:54 -07:00
Kbuild Kbuild updates for v6.1 2022-10-10 12:00:45 -07:00
Kconfig kbuild: ensure full rebuild when the compiler is updated 2020-05-12 13:28:33 +09:00
MAINTAINERS MAINTAINERS 2: Electric Boogaloo 2023-07-09 10:29:53 -07:00
Makefile Linux 6.5-rc1 2023-07-09 13:53:13 -07:00
README Drop all 00-INDEX files from Documentation/ 2018-09-09 15:08:58 -06:00

README

Linux kernel
============

There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.

In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``.  The formatted documentation can also be read online at:

    https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/

There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.

Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.