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setuid-wrapper activationScript is not atomic #18124

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domenkozar opened this issue Aug 30, 2016 · 4 comments
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setuid-wrapper activationScript is not atomic #18124

domenkozar opened this issue Aug 30, 2016 · 4 comments
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@domenkozar
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domenkozar commented Aug 30, 2016

It's currently possible to cancel nixos-rebuild between deletion of previous setuid wrappers and population of new ones. And yes, I've been able to lock myself out of machine (almost, if I didn't have root ssh key).

Current implementation: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/nixos/modules/security/setuid-wrappers.nix#L118-L120

Proposed implementation (see at the bottom of blog post): https://axialcorps.com/2013/07/03/atomically-replacing-files-and-directories/

@shlevy shlevy self-assigned this Aug 30, 2016
shlevy added a commit to shlevy/nixpkgs that referenced this issue Aug 31, 2016
This makes the replacement of the old wapper dir with the new one
atomic if the kernel and FS support RENAME_EXCHANGE, and falls back to
at least ensuring the old wrapper dir remains on the FS if interrupted
during the (now smaller) inconsistent window.

Fixes NixOS#18124
shlevy added a commit to shlevy/nixpkgs that referenced this issue Aug 31, 2016
@domenkozar domenkozar reopened this Sep 1, 2016
@domenkozar
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@edolstra @shlevy so this was failing because it's ready a tmpfs upon install:

nixos/modules/installer/tools/nixos-install.sh:mount -t tmpfs -o "mode=0755" none $mountPoint/var/setuid-wrappers

So, if we want /var/setuid-wrappers/ to be a tmpfs and a symlink that won't work.

My proposal would be to make /var/setuid-wrappers/ a tmpfs and move conents to /var/setuid-wrappers/bin which could then be a symlink. This would be a backwards incompatible change, but we can fix it in nixpkgs and document it.

Thoughts?

@domenkozar domenkozar added this to the 16.09 milestone Sep 1, 2016
@shlevy
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shlevy commented Sep 1, 2016

I think it would be better to just not have /var/setuid-wrappers be a tmpfs since we're symlinking to a tmpfs anyway.

@edolstra
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edolstra commented Sep 1, 2016

@domenkozar Well, we can just change nixos-install not to create that tmpfs, right? Not sure why it's doing that anyway...

@domenkozar
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I'll have a PR ready soon, fixing a bug atm.

domenkozar added a commit to domenkozar/nixpkgs that referenced this issue Sep 1, 2016
Before this commit updating /var/setuid-wrappers/ folder introduced
a small window where NixOS activation scripts could be terminated
and resulted into empty /var/setuid-wrappers/ folder.

That's very unfortunate because one might lose sudo binary.

Instead we use two atomic operations mv and ln (as described in
https://axialcorps.com/2013/07/03/atomically-replacing-files-and-directories/)
to achieve atomicity.

Since /var/setuid-wrappers is not a directory anymore, tmpfs mountpoints
were removed in installation scripts and in boot process.

Tested:

- upgrade /var/setuid-wrappers/ from folder to a symlink
- make sure /run/setuid-wrappers-dirs/ legacy symlink is really deleted
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