901cff7cb9
I have an experimental setup where almost every possible system service (even early startup ones) runs in separate namespace, using a dedicated, minimal file system. In process of minimizing the contents of the file systems with regards to modules and firmware files, I noticed that in my system, the firmware files are loaded from three different mount namespaces, those of systemd-udevd, init and systemd-networkd. The logic of the source namespace is not very clear, it seems to depend on the driver, but the namespace of the current process is used. So, this patch tries to make things a bit clearer and changes the loading of firmware files only from the mount namespace of init. This may also improve security, though I think that using firmware files as attack vector could be too impractical anyway. Later, it might make sense to make the mount namespace configurable, for example with a new file in /proc/sys/kernel/firmware_config/. That would allow a dedicated file system only for firmware files and those need not be present anywhere else. This configurability would make more sense if made also for kernel modules and /sbin/modprobe. Modules are already loaded from init namespace (usermodehelper uses kthreadd namespace) except when directly loaded by systemd-udevd. Instead of using the mount namespace of the current process to load firmware files, use the mount namespace of init process. Link: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/bb46ebae-4746-90d9-ec5b-fce4c9328c86@gmail.com/ Link: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/0e3f7653-c59d-9341-9db2-c88f5b988c68@gmail.com/ Signed-off-by: Topi Miettinen <toiwoton@gmail.com> Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20200123125839.37168-1-toiwoton@gmail.com Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
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.