[libvirt] [PATCH] qemu: don't label anything before locking the domain

Daniel P. Berrange berrange at redhat.com
Thu Jun 26 11:42:52 UTC 2014


On Thu, Jun 26, 2014 at 01:20:02PM +0200, Martin Kletzander wrote:
> If locking the domain failed, files were already labelled and thus we
> restored the previous label on them.  Having disks on NFS means the
> domain having the lock already gets permission denial.
> 
> This code moves the labelling part into the command hook since it's
> still privileged, and also moves the clearing of
> VIR_QEMU_PROCESS_STOP_NO_RELABEL from stop_flags right after the
> handshare after hook.

This problem description / fix doesn't make much sense to me.

IIUC the control flow is

  - Parent runs fork()
  - Parent waits for handshake notify
  - Child runs hook
      - Hook *only* registers with lock daemon
  - Child sends handshake notify to parent
  - Child waits for handshake response
  - Parent received handshake notify
  - Parent does labelling
  - Parent sends handshake response
  - Child execs QEMU
  - QEMU launches but CPUs are paused
  - Parent acquires disk locks
  - Parent tells QEMU to start CPUs

Note that the hook does not acquire any locks - it merely connects
to the lock daemon. Locks are not acquired until the CPUs are ready
to be started. So I don't see how moving labelling into the hook
solves anything.

Note that the goal of the locking code as it is today, was only to
prevent the content of the disk image being corrupted by 2 QEMUs
running concurrently. The design as it is succeeds in this. Stopping
changes to the labelling was not attempted. Yes, this will result
in a running QEMU loosing access to a disk if another QEMU attempts
to start and use those disks, but the content is protected in this
way.

It isn't actually possible to protect against concurrent changes
to both the content and the labelling with a single lock because
there are differing lock ordering & protection rules requires for
these.

To do that, we actually need to incorporate use of the lock manager
into the security drivers using a separate lock space and use locking
rules that apply explicitly to the needs of the labelling.

Regards,
Daniel
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