[PATCH v2 0/3] block: add queue-private command filter, editable via sysfs

From: Paolo Bonzini
Date: Tue Sep 25 2012 - 11:30:14 EST


The set of use cases for SG_IO is quite variable that no single filter can
accomodate all of them. The current filter is tailored very much to
CD burning, and includes many MMC-specific commands that may have
other meanings in different standards. Someone may want to remove
those commands; at the same time, people that trust their users may
want to add persistent reservations, trim/discard, or even access to
vendor-specific commands.

Filters used to be mutable via sysfs, but the implementation was
never enabled. Add it back, and let the admin set this up per device.

A simple bitmap does not let you do things like enabling command A with
option B on a specific device for a certain block range. However, the
question is really whether this is needed---in fact, neither of the known
uses for the filtering need it.

In one use case, the administrator then needs the ability to configure
devices easily, for example to be much more restrictive on non-MMC
devices. It must be done with the same tools it uses for other aspects
of the policy---which will be a combination of DAC (Unix permissions and
ACLs) and sysfs. Different SCSI standards may give different meanings
for the same byte value, but a simple bitmap is enough for this.

In the virtualization case, the problem is really that you want to
pass through everything or almost everything, while still running as
confined as possible (i.e. CAP_SYS_RAWIO is not a choice). But in this
case a more complex filtering can be done just as easily in userspace,
in the virtual machine monitor. While the userspace filter can be
subverted if the guest can escape the QEMU jail, the bitmap still lets
you block some commands at the kernel level if really necessary.

One alternative is a ioctl to disable the filter altogether, to be
used together with SCM_RIGHTS file descriptor passing. This works in
the virtualization case but not for policy decisions. So this patch
series provides the sysfs knob. It is a tweaked revert of commit 018e044
(block: get rid of queue-private command filter, 2009-06-26).

Please review!

Paolo

v1->v2: add OOM and capability checks

Paolo Bonzini (3):
block: add back queue-private command filter
scsi: create an all-zero filter for scanners
block: add back command filter modification via sysfs

Documentation/block/queue-sysfs.txt | 16 +++++
block/Kconfig | 10 +++
block/blk-sysfs.c | 43 +++++++++++++
block/bsg.c | 2 +-
block/scsi_ioctl.c | 117 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++----
drivers/scsi/scsi_scan.c | 6 ++-
drivers/scsi/sg.c | 7 +-
include/linux/blkdev.h | 31 +++++++++-
8 files changed, 213 insertions(+), 19 deletions(-)

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