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From:   ebiederm@xmission.com (Eric W. Biederman)
To:     "Michael Kerrisk \(man-pages\)" <mtk.manpages@gmail.com>
Cc:     Christian Brauner <christian.brauner@ubuntu.com>,
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Date:   Tue, 10 Sep 2019 18:06:48 -0500
In-Reply-To: <30545c5c-ff4c-8b87-e591-40cc0a631304@gmail.com> (Michael
        Kerrisk's message of "Tue, 10 Sep 2019 13:21:16 +0200")
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Subject: Re: pivot_root(".", ".") and the fchdir() dance
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"Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)" <mtk.manpages@gmail.com> writes:

> Hello Christian,
>
>>> All: I plan to add the following text to the manual page:
>>>
>>>        new_root and put_old may be the same  directory.   In  particular,
>>>        the following sequence allows a pivot-root operation without need‐
>>>        ing to create and remove a temporary directory:
>>>
>>>            chdir(new_root);
>>>            pivot_root(".", ".");
>>>            umount2(".", MNT_DETACH);
>> 
>> Hm, should we mention that MS_PRIVATE or MS_SLAVE is usually needed
>> before the umount2()? Especially for the container case... I think we
>> discussed this briefly yesterday in person.
> Thanks for noticing. That detail (more precisely: not MS_SHARED) is
> already covered in the numerous other changes that I have pending
> for this page:
>
>        The following restrictions apply:
>        ...
>        -  The propagation type of new_root and its parent mount must  not
>           be MS_SHARED; similarly, if put_old is an existing mount point,
>           its propagation type must not be MS_SHARED.

Ugh.  That is close but not quite correct.

A better explanation:

    The pivot_root system call will never propagate any changes it makes.
    The pivot_root system call ensures this is safe by verifying that
    none of put_old, the parent of new_root, and parent of the root directory
    have a propagation type of MS_SHARED.

>

The concern from our conversation at the container mini-summit was that
there is a pathology if in your initial mount namespace all of the
mounts are marked MS_SHARED like systemd does (and is almost necessary
if you are going to use mount propagation), that if new_root itself
is MS_SHARED then unmounting the old_root could propagate.

So I believe the desired sequence is:

>>>            chdir(new_root);
+++            mount("", ".", MS_SLAVE | MS_REC, NULL);
>>>            pivot_root(".", ".");
>>>            umount2(".", MNT_DETACH);

The change to new new_root could be either MS_SLAVE or MS_PRIVATE.  So
long as it is not MS_SHARED the mount won't propagate back to the
parent mount namespace.

Eric