Re: libcap vs libcap-ng mess

[Paolo Bonzini]

On 29/11/19 19:20, Dr. David Alan Gilbert wrote:
> * Paolo Bonzini (address@hidden) wrote:
>> On 29/11/19 19:01, Dr. David Alan Gilbert wrote:
>>>> It's not entirely trivial because fsdev-proxy-helper wants to keep the
>>>> effective set and clear the permitted set; in libcap-ng you can only
>>                      ^^^^^
>>
>> (Wrong, this is "modify" the permitted set.  The permitted set is
>> already cleared by setresuid/setresgid).
>>
>>>> apply both sets at once, and you cannot choose only one of them in
>>>> capng_clear/capng_get_caps_process.  But it's doable, I'll take a look.
>>> I'm having some difficulties making the same conversion for virtiofsd;
>>> all it wants to do is drop (and later recover) CAP_FSETID
>>> from it's effective set;  so I'm calling capng_get_caps_process
>>> (it used to be cap_get_proc).  While libcap survives just using the
>>> capget syscall, libcap-ng wants to read /proc/<TID>/status - and
>>> that's a problem because we're in a sandbox without /proc mounted
>>> at that point.
>>
>> The state of libcap-ng persists after capng_apply.  So you can just call
>> capng_update({CAP_ADD,CAP_DROP}) followed by capng_apply.
> 
> But the internal state needs initialising doesn't it? So that when you
> capng_update it tweaks a set that was originally read from somewhere?
> (and that's per-thread?)

Yes, it's per thread.  The state can be built from
capng_clear/capng_get_caps_process + capng_update, and left in there
forever.  There is also capng_save_state/capng_restore_state which, as
far as I can see from the sources, can be used across threads.

>> Does virtiofsd have to do uid/gid dances like virtfs-proxy-helper?
> 
> It looks like it; I can see setresuid calls to save and restore
> euid/egid.

Ok, then perhaps you can take a look at my virtfs-proxy-helper patch.
The important part is that after setresuid/setresgid PERM=EFF if
uid=0/gid=0 and PERM=0 otherwise.

Paolo