linux/Documentation/filesystems/sysfs-tagging.rst

.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0

=============
Sysfs tagging
=============

(Taken almost verbatim from Eric Biederman's netns tagging patch
commit msg)

The problem.  Network devices show up in sysfs and with the network
namespace active multiple devices with the same name can show up in
the same directory, ouch!

To avoid that problem and allow existing applications in network
namespaces to see the same interface that is currently presented in
sysfs, sysfs now has tagging directory support.

By using the network namespace pointers as tags to separate out the
the sysfs directory entries we ensure that we don't have conflicts
in the directories and applications only see a limited set of
the network devices.

Each sysfs directory entry may be tagged with a namespace via the
``void *ns member`` of its ``kernfs_node``.  If a directory entry is tagged,
then ``kernfs_node->flags`` will have a flag between KOBJ_NS_TYPE_NONE
and KOBJ_NS_TYPES, and ns will point to the namespace to which it
belongs.

Each sysfs superblock's kernfs_super_info contains an array
``void *ns[KOBJ_NS_TYPES]``.  When a task in a tagging namespace
kobj_nstype first mounts sysfs, a new superblock is created.  It
will be differentiated from other sysfs mounts by having its
``s_fs_info->ns[kobj_nstype]`` set to the new namespace.  Note that
through bind mounting and mounts propagation, a task can easily view
the contents of other namespaces' sysfs mounts.  Therefore, when a
namespace exits, it will call kobj_ns_exit() to invalidate any
kernfs_node->ns pointers pointing to it.

Users of this interface:

- define a type in the ``kobj_ns_type`` enumeration.
- call kobj_ns_type_register() with its ``kobj_ns_type_operations`` which has

  - current_ns() which returns current's namespace
  - netlink_ns() which returns a socket's namespace
  - initial_ns() which returns the initial namesapce

- call kobj_ns_exit() when an individual tag is no longer valid