diff mbox series

[v12,5/7] docs: proc: add documentation for "hidepid=4" and "subset=pid" options and new mount behavior

Message ID 20200419141057.621356-6-gladkov.alexey@gmail.com (mailing list archive)
State New, archived
Headers show
Series proc: modernize proc to support multiple private instances | expand

Commit Message

Alexey Gladkov April 19, 2020, 2:10 p.m. UTC 
Signed-off-by: Alexey Gladkov <gladkov.alexey@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: Alexey Dobriyan <adobriyan@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
---
 Documentation/filesystems/proc.rst | 54 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 54 insertions(+)
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Patch

diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/proc.rst b/Documentation/filesystems/proc.rst
index 38b606991065..360486c7a992 100644
--- a/Documentation/filesystems/proc.rst
+++ b/Documentation/filesystems/proc.rst
@@ -51,6 +51,8 @@  fixes/update part 1.1  Stefani Seibold <stefani@seibold.net>    June 9 2009
   4	Configuring procfs
   4.1	Mount options
 
+  5	Filesystem behavior
+
 Preface
 =======
 
@@ -2142,6 +2144,7 @@  The following mount options are supported:
 	=========	========================================================
 	hidepid=	Set /proc/<pid>/ access mode.
 	gid=		Set the group authorized to learn processes information.
+	subset=		Show only the specified subset of procfs.
 	=========	========================================================
 
 hidepid=0 means classic mode - everybody may access all /proc/<pid>/ directories
@@ -2164,6 +2167,57 @@  information about running processes, whether some daemon runs with elevated
 privileges, whether other user runs some sensitive program, whether other users
 run any program at all, etc.
 
+hidepid=4 means that procfs should only contain /proc/<pid>/ directories
+that the caller can ptrace.
+
 gid= defines a group authorized to learn processes information otherwise
 prohibited by hidepid=.  If you use some daemon like identd which needs to learn
 information about processes information, just add identd to this group.
+
+subset=pid hides all top level files and directories in the procfs that
+are not related to tasks.
+
+5	Filesystem behavior
+----------------------------
+
+Originally, before the advent of pid namepsace, procfs was a global file
+system. It means that there was only one procfs instance in the system.
+
+When pid namespace was added, a separate procfs instance was mounted in
+each pid namespace. So, procfs mount options are global among all
+mountpoints within the same namespace.
+
+::
+
+# grep ^proc /proc/mounts
+proc /proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=2 0 0
+
+# strace -e mount mount -o hidepid=1 -t proc proc /tmp/proc
+mount("proc", "/tmp/proc", "proc", 0, "hidepid=1") = 0
++++ exited with 0 +++
+
+# grep ^proc /proc/mounts
+proc /proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=2 0 0
+proc /tmp/proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=2 0 0
+
+and only after remounting procfs mount options will change at all
+mountpoints.
+
+# mount -o remount,hidepid=1 -t proc proc /tmp/proc
+
+# grep ^proc /proc/mounts
+proc /proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=1 0 0
+proc /tmp/proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=1 0 0
+
+This behavior is different from the behavior of other filesystems.
+
+The new procfs behavior is more like other filesystems. Each procfs mount
+creates a new procfs instance. Mount options affect own procfs instance.
+It means that it became possible to have several procfs instances
+displaying tasks with different filtering options in one pid namespace.
+
+# mount -o hidepid=2 -t proc proc /proc
+# mount -o hidepid=1 -t proc proc /tmp/proc
+# grep ^proc /proc/mounts
+proc /proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=2 0 0
+proc /tmp/proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=1 0 0