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Bug#898446: Please reconsider enabling the user namespaces by default



On Tue, 2020-10-20 at 17:21 +0100, Simon McVittie wrote:
> On Thu, 16 Apr 2020 at 03:09:25 +0100, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> > I don't think we should keep patching in
> > kernel.unprivileged_userns_clone forever, so the documented way to
> > disable user namespaces should be setting user.max_user_namespaces to
> > 0.  But then there's no good way to have a drop-in file that changes
> > back to the upstream default, because that's dependent on system memory
> > size.
> > 
> > So I think we should do something like this:
> > 
> > * Document user.max_user_namespaces in procps's shipped
> >   /etc/sysctl.conf
> > * Set kernel.unprivileged_userns_clone to 1 by default, and deprecate
> >   it (log a warning if it's changed)
> > * Document the change in bullseye release notes
> 
> Is this something you intend to do before bullseye, or is it now going
> to be after bullseye?

I would like to do this for bullseye.  However, this has to be a
collective decision of the team.

> If this is intended to happen before bullseye, I'd like enough time
> before the freeze to put an as-graceful-as-possible transition in place
> in the bubblewrap package.
> 
> (I'm not sure what form that transition should take - suggestions welcome!
> Ideally I'd like bubblewrap to be setuid root if and only if we are still
> using a kernel where it needs to be.)

The only way I see to do that properly is to run a program at boot that
sets the setuid bit correctly for the running kernel.

You can get close with a kernel postinst hook, but you'd be changing
the bit before the new kernel is running, and for non-official kernel
packages you won't know whether they allow unprivileged user-namespace
creation.

Ben.

-- 
Ben Hutchings
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