Re: RFC: permit link(2) to work across --bind mounts ?

From: Al Viro
Date: Tue Dec 18 2007 - 18:14:20 EST


On Tue, Dec 18, 2007 at 11:00:16PM +0000, Al Viro wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 18, 2007 at 05:46:21PM -0500, Mark Lord wrote:
> > Why does link(2) not support hard-linking across bind mount points
> > of the same underlying filesystem ?
>
> Because it gives you a security boundary around a subtree.

PS: that had been discussed quite a few times, but to avoid searches:
consider e.g. mount --bind /tmp /tmp; now you've got a situation when
users can't create links to elsewhere no root fs, even though they
have /tmp writable to them. Similar technics works for other isolation
needs - basically, you can confine rename/link to given subtree. IOW,
it's a deliberate feature. Note that you can bind a bunch of trees
into chroot and get predictable restrictions regardless of how the
stuff might get rearranged a year later in the main tree, etc.
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/