This service allows cryptographic keys, authentication tokens, cross-domain
user mappings, and similar to be cached in the kernel for the use of
-filesystems other kernel services.
+filesystems and other kernel services.
Keyrings are permitted; these are a special type of key that can hold links to
other keys. Processes each have three standard keyring subscriptions that a
- Notes on accessing payload contents
- Defining a key type
- Request-key callback service
- - Key access filesystem
+ - Garbage collection
============
(*) Dead. The key's type was unregistered, and so the key is now useless.
+Keys in the last three states are subject to garbage collection. See the
+section on "Garbage collection".
+
====================
KEY SERVICE OVERVIEW
amount of description and payload space that can be consumed.
The user can view information on this and other statistics through procfs
- files.
+ files. The root user may also alter the quota limits through sysctl files
+ (see the section "New procfs files").
Process-specific and thread-specific keyrings are not counted towards a
user's quota.
<bytes>/<max> Key size quota
+Four new sysctl files have been added also for the purpose of controlling the
+quota limits on keys:
+
+ (*) /proc/sys/kernel/keys/root_maxkeys
+ /proc/sys/kernel/keys/root_maxbytes
+
+ These files hold the maximum number of keys that root may have and the
+ maximum total number of bytes of data that root may have stored in those
+ keys.
+
+ (*) /proc/sys/kernel/keys/maxkeys
+ /proc/sys/kernel/keys/maxbytes
+
+ These files hold the maximum number of keys that each non-root user may
+ have and the maximum total number of bytes of data that each of those
+ users may have stored in their keys.
+
+Root may alter these by writing each new limit as a decimal number string to
+the appropriate file.
+
+
===============================
USERSPACE SYSTEM CALL INTERFACE
===============================
The assumed authoritative key is inherited across fork and exec.
+ (*) Get the LSM security context attached to a key.
+
+ long keyctl(KEYCTL_GET_SECURITY, key_serial_t key, char *buffer,
+ size_t buflen)
+
+ This function returns a string that represents the LSM security context
+ attached to a key in the buffer provided.
+
+ Unless there's an error, it always returns the amount of data it could
+ produce, even if that's too big for the buffer, but it won't copy more
+ than requested to userspace. If the buffer pointer is NULL then no copy
+ will take place.
+
+ A NUL character is included at the end of the string if the buffer is
+ sufficiently big. This is included in the returned count. If no LSM is
+ in force then an empty string will be returned.
+
+ A process must have view permission on the key for this function to be
+ successful.
+
+
+ (*) Install the calling process's session keyring on its parent.
+
+ long keyctl(KEYCTL_SESSION_TO_PARENT);
+
+ This functions attempts to install the calling process's session keyring
+ on to the calling process's parent, replacing the parent's current session
+ keyring.
+
+ The calling process must have the same ownership as its parent, the
+ keyring must have the same ownership as the calling process, the calling
+ process must have LINK permission on the keyring and the active LSM module
+ mustn't deny permission, otherwise error EPERM will be returned.
+
+ Error ENOMEM will be returned if there was insufficient memory to complete
+ the operation, otherwise 0 will be returned to indicate success.
+
+ The keyring will be replaced next time the parent process leaves the
+ kernel and resumes executing userspace.
+
+
===============
KERNEL SERVICES
===============
two different users opening the same file is left to the filesystem author to
solve.
+To access the key manager, the following header must be #included:
+
+ <linux/key.h>
+
+Specific key types should have a header file under include/keys/ that should be
+used to access that type. For keys of type "user", for example, that would be:
+
+ <keys/user-type.h>
+
Note that there are two different types of pointers to keys that may be
encountered:
struct key *request_key(const struct key_type *type,
const char *description,
- const char *callout_string);
+ const char *callout_info);
This is used to request a key or keyring with a description that matches
the description specified according to the key type's match function. This
struct key *request_key_with_auxdata(const struct key_type *type,
const char *description,
- const char *callout_string,
+ const void *callout_info,
+ size_t callout_len,
void *aux);
This is identical to request_key(), except that the auxiliary data is
- passed to the key_type->request_key() op if it exists.
+ passed to the key_type->request_key() op if it exists, and the callout_info
+ is a blob of length callout_len, if given (the length may be 0).
+
+
+(*) A key can be requested asynchronously by calling one of:
+
+ struct key *request_key_async(const struct key_type *type,
+ const char *description,
+ const void *callout_info,
+ size_t callout_len);
+
+ or:
+
+ struct key *request_key_async_with_auxdata(const struct key_type *type,
+ const char *description,
+ const char *callout_info,
+ size_t callout_len,
+ void *aux);
+
+ which are asynchronous equivalents of request_key() and
+ request_key_with_auxdata() respectively.
+
+ These two functions return with the key potentially still under
+ construction. To wait for construction completion, the following should be
+ called:
+
+ int wait_for_key_construction(struct key *key, bool intr);
+
+ The function will wait for the key to finish being constructed and then
+ invokes key_validate() to return an appropriate value to indicate the state
+ of the key (0 indicates the key is usable).
+
+ If intr is true, then the wait can be interrupted by a signal, in which
+ case error ERESTARTSYS will be returned.
(*) When it is no longer required, the key should be released using:
A kernel service may want to define its own key type. For instance, an AFS
filesystem might want to define a Kerberos 5 ticket key type. To do this, it
-author fills in a struct key_type and registers it with the system.
+author fills in a key_type struct and registers it with the system.
+
+Source files that implement key types should include the following header file:
+
+ <linux/key-type.h>
The structure has a number of fields, some of which are mandatory:
as might happen when the userspace buffer is accessed.
- (*) int (*request_key)(struct key *key, struct key *authkey, const char *op,
+ (*) int (*request_key)(struct key_construction *cons, const char *op,
void *aux);
- This method is optional. If provided, request_key() and
- request_key_with_auxdata() will invoke this function rather than
- upcalling to /sbin/request-key to operate upon a key of this type.
+ This method is optional. If provided, request_key() and friends will
+ invoke this function rather than upcalling to /sbin/request-key to operate
+ upon a key of this type.
+
+ The aux parameter is as passed to request_key_async_with_auxdata() and
+ similar or is NULL otherwise. Also passed are the construction record for
+ the key to be operated upon and the operation type (currently only
+ "create").
+
+ This method is permitted to return before the upcall is complete, but the
+ following function must be called under all circumstances to complete the
+ instantiation process, whether or not it succeeds, whether or not there's
+ an error:
+
+ void complete_request_key(struct key_construction *cons, int error);
+
+ The error parameter should be 0 on success, -ve on error. The
+ construction record is destroyed by this action and the authorisation key
+ will be revoked. If an error is indicated, the key under construction
+ will be negatively instantiated if it wasn't already instantiated.
+
+ If this method returns an error, that error will be returned to the
+ caller of request_key*(). complete_request_key() must be called prior to
+ returning.
+
+ The key under construction and the authorisation key can be found in the
+ key_construction struct pointed to by cons:
- The aux parameter is as passed to request_key_with_auxdata() or is NULL
- otherwise. Also passed are the key to be operated upon, the
- authorisation key for this operation and the operation type (currently
- only "create").
+ (*) struct key *key;
- This function should return only when the upcall is complete. Upon return
- the authorisation key will be revoked, and the target key will be
- negatively instantiated if it is still uninstantiated. The error will be
- returned to the caller of request_key*().
+ The key under construction.
+
+ (*) struct key *authkey;
+
+ The authorisation key.
============================
In this case, the program isn't required to actually attach the key to a ring;
the rings are provided for reference.
+
+
+==================
+GARBAGE COLLECTION
+==================
+
+Dead keys (for which the type has been removed) will be automatically unlinked
+from those keyrings that point to them and deleted as soon as possible by a
+background garbage collector.
+
+Similarly, revoked and expired keys will be garbage collected, but only after a
+certain amount of time has passed. This time is set as a number of seconds in:
+
+ /proc/sys/kernel/keys/gc_delay
git://ftp.safe.ca / safe / jmp / linux-2.6 / blobdiff