.\" Copyright (c) 2021 by Christian Brauner .\" .\" %%%LICENSE_START(VERBATIM) .\" Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this .\" manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are .\" preserved on all copies. .\" .\" Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this .\" manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the .\" entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a .\" permission notice identical to this one. .\" .\" Since the Linux kernel and libraries are constantly changing, this .\" manual page may be incorrect or out-of-date. The author(s) assume no .\" responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from .\" the use of the information contained herein. The author(s) may not .\" have taken the same level of care in the production of this manual, .\" which is licensed free of charge, as they might when working .\" professionally. .\" .\" Formatted or processed versions of this manual, if unaccompanied by .\" the source, must acknowledge the copyright and authors of this work. .\" %%%LICENSE_END .\" .TH MOUNT_SETATTR 2 2021-03-22 "Linux" "Linux Programmer's Manual" .SH NAME mount_setattr \- change mount properties of a mount or mount tree .SH SYNOPSIS .nf .PP .BR "#include " " /* Definition of " AT_* " constants */" .BR "#include " " /* Definition of struct mount_attr and MOUNT_ATTR_* constants */" .BR "#include " " /* Definition of " SYS_* " constants */" .B #include .PP .BI "int syscall(SYS_mount_setattr, int " dfd ", const char *" path \ ", unsigned int " flags \ ", struct mount_attr *" attr ", size_t " size ); .fi .PP .IR Note : glibc provides no wrapper for .BR mount_setattr (), necessitating the use of .BR syscall (2). .SH DESCRIPTION The .BR mount_setattr (2) system call changes the mount properties of a mount or entire mount tree. If .I path is a relative pathname, then it is interpreted relative to the directory referred to by the file descriptor .IR dfd . If .I dfd is the special value .B AT_FDCWD then .I path is taken to be relative to the current working directory of the calling process. If .I path is the empty string and .BR AT_EMPTY_PATH is specified in .I flags then the mount properties of the mount identified by .I dfd are changed. .PP The .BR mount_setattr (2) system call uses an extensible structure .IR ( "struct mount_attr" ) to allow for future extensions. Any non-flag extensions to .BR mount_setattr (2) will be implemented as new fields appended to the above structure, with a zero value in a new field resulting in the kernel behaving as though that extension field was not present. Therefore, the caller .I must zero-fill this structure on initialization. Please see the "Extensibility" section under .B NOTES for more details. .PP The .I size argument should usually be specified as .IR "sizeof(struct mount_attr)" . However, if the caller does not intend to make use of features that got introduced after the initial version of .I struct mount_attr they are free to pass the size of the initial struct together with the larger struct. This allows the kernel to not copy later parts of the struct that aren't used anyway. With each extension that changes the size of .I struct mount_attr the kernel will expose a define of the form .BR MOUNT_ATTR_SIZE_VER . For example the macro for the size of the initial version of .I struct mount_attr is .BR MOUNT_ATTR_SIZE_VER0 . .PP The .I flags argument can be used to alter the path resolution behavior. The supported values are: .TP .B AT_EMPTY_PATH If .I path is the empty string change the mount properties on .I dfd itself. .TP .B AT_RECURSIVE Change the mount properties of the entire mount tree. .TP .B AT_SYMLINK_NOFOLLOW Don't follow trailing symlinks. .TP .B AT_NO_AUTOMOUNT Don't trigger automounts. .PP The .I attr argument of .BR mount_setattr (2) is a structure of the following form: .PP .in +4n .EX struct mount_attr { __u64 attr_set; /* Mount properties to set. */ __u64 attr_clr; /* Mount properties to clear. */ __u64 propagation; /* Mount propagation type. */ __u64 userns_fd; /* User namespace file descriptor. */ }; .EE .in .PP The .I attr_set and .I attr_clr members are used to specify the mount properties that are supposed to be set or cleared for a mount or mount tree. Flags set in .I attr_set enable a property on a mount or mount tree and flags set in .I attr_clr remove a property from a mount or mount tree. .PP When changing mount properties the kernel will first clear the flags specified in the .I attr_clr field and then set the flags specified in the .I attr_set field: .PP .in +4n .EX struct mount_attr attr = { .attr_clr = MOUNT_ATTR_NOEXEC | MOUNT_ATTR_NODEV, .attr_set = MOUNT_ATTR_RDONLY | MOUNT_ATTR_NOSUID, }; unsigned int current_mnt_flags = mnt->mnt_flags; /* * Clear all flags set in .attr_clr, * clearing MOUNT_ATTR_NOEXEC and MOUNT_ATTR_NODEV. */ current_mnt_flags &= ~attr->attr_clr; /* * Now set all flags set in .attr_set, * applying MOUNT_ATTR_RDONLY and MOUNT_ATTR_NOSUID. */ current_mnt_flags |= attr->attr_set; mnt->mnt_flags = current_mnt_flags; .EE .in .PP The effect of this change will be a mount or mount tree that is read-only, blocks the execution of set-user-ID and set-group-ID binaries but does allow to execute programs and access to devices nodes. Multiple changes with the same set of flags requested in .I attr_clr and .I attr_set are guaranteed to be idempotent after the changes have been applied. .PP The following mount attributes can be specified in the .I attr_set or .I attr_clr fields: .TP .B MOUNT_ATTR_RDONLY If set in .I attr_set makes the mount read-only and if set in .I attr_clr removes the read-only setting if set on the mount. .TP .B MOUNT_ATTR_NOSUID If set in .I attr_set makes the mount not honor set-user-ID and set-group-ID binaries, and file capabilities when executing programs. If set in .I attr_clr clears the set-user-ID, set-group-ID, and file capability restriction if set on this mount. .TP .B MOUNT_ATTR_NODEV If set in .I attr_set prevents access to devices on this mount and if set in .I attr_clr removes the device access restriction if set on this mount. .TP .BR MOUNT_ATTR_NOEXEC If set in .I attr_set prevents executing programs on this mount and if set in .I attr_clr removes the restriction to execute programs on this mount. .TP .BR MOUNT_ATTR_NOSYMFOLLOW If set in .I attr_set prevents following symlinks on this mount and if set in .I attr_clr removes the restriction to not follow symlinks on this mount. .TP .B MOUNT_ATTR_NODIRATIME If set in .I attr_set prevents updating access time for directories on this mount and if set in .I attr_clr removes access time restriction for directories. Note that .BR MOUNT_ATTR_NODIRATIME can be combined with other access time settings and is implied by the noatime setting. All other access time settings are mutually exclusive. .TP .BR MOUNT_ATTR__ATIME " - Changing access time settings In the new mount api the access time values are an enum starting from 0. Even though they are an enum in contrast to the other mount flags such as .BR MOUNT_ATTR_NOEXEC they are nonetheless passed in .I attr_set and .I attr_clr for consistency with .BR fsmount (2) which introduced this behavior. .IP Note, since access times are an enum, not a bitmap, users wanting to transition to a different access time setting cannot simply specify the access time in .I attr_set but must also set .B MOUNT_ATTR__ATIME in the .I attr_clr field. The kernel will verify that .BR MOUNT_ATTR__ATIME isn't partially set in .I attr_clr and that .I attr_set doesn't have any access time bits set if .BR MOUNT_ATTR__ATIME isn't set in .IR attr_clr . .RS .TP .B MOUNT_ATTR_RELATIME When a file is accessed via this mount, update the file's last access time (atime) only if the current value of atime is less than or equal to the file's last modification time (mtime) or last status change time (ctime). .IP To enable this access time setting on a mount or mount tree .BR MOUNT_ATTR_RELATIME must be set in .I attr_set and .BR MOUNT_ATTR__ATIME must be set in the .I attr_clr field. .TP .BR MOUNT_ATTR_NOATIME Do not update access times for (all types of) files on this mount. .IP To enable this access time setting on a mount or mount tree .BR MOUNT_ATTR_NOATIME must be set in .I attr_set and .BR MOUNT_ATTR__ATIME must be set in the .I attr_clr field. .TP .BR MOUNT_ATTR_STRICTATIME Always update the last access time (atime) when files are accessed on this mount. .IP To enable this access time setting on a mount or mount tree .BR MOUNT_ATTR_STRICTATIME must be set in .I attr_set and .BR MOUNT_ATTR__ATIME must be set in the .I attr_clr field. .RE .TP .BR MOUNT_ATTR_IDMAP If set in .I attr_set creates an idmapped mount. Since it is not supported to change the idmapping of a mount after it has been idmapped, it is invalid to specify .B MOUNT_ATTR_IDMAP in .IR attr_clr . The idmapping is taken from the user namespace specified in .I userns_fd and attached to the mount. More details can be found in subsequent paragraphs. .IP Creating an idmapped mount allows to change the ownership of all files located under a mount. Thus, idmapped mounts make it possible to change ownership in a temporary and localized way. It is a localized change because ownership changes are restricted to a specific mount. All other users and locations where the filesystem is exposed are unaffected. And it is a temporary change because ownership changes are tied to the lifetime of the mount. .IP Whenever callers interact with the filesystem through an idmapped mount the idmapping of the mount will be applied to user and group IDs associated with filesystem objects. This encompasses the user and group IDs associated with inodes and also the following .BR xattr (7) keys: .RS .RS .IP \(bu 2 .IR security.capability whenever filesystem .BR capabilities (7) are stored or returned in the .I VFS_CAP_REVISION_3 format which stores a rootid alongside the capabilities. .IP \(bu 2 .I system.posix_acl_access and .I system.posix_acl_default whenever user IDs or group IDs are stored in .BR ACL_USER and .BR ACL_GROUP entries. .RE .RE .IP The following conditions must be met in order to create an idmapped mount: .RS .RS .IP \(bu 2 The caller must have .I CAP_SYS_ADMIN in the initial user namespace. .IP \(bu 2 The filesystem must be mounted in the initial user namespace. .IP \(bu The underlying filesystem must support idmapped mounts. Currently .BR xfs (5), .BR ext4 (5) and .BR fat filesystems support idmapped mounts with more filesystems being actively worked on. .IP \(bu The mount must not already be idmapped. This also implies that the idmapping of a mount cannot be altered. .IP \(bu The mount must be a detached/anonymous mount, i.e., it must have been created by calling .BR open_tree (2) with the .I OPEN_TREE_CLONE flag and it must not already have been visible in the filesystem. .RE .RE .IP Idmappings can be created for user IDs, group IDs, and project IDs. An idmapping is essentially a mapping of a range of user or group IDs into another or the same range of user or group IDs. Idmappings are usually written as three numbers either separated by white space or a full stop. The first two numbers specify the starting user or group ID in each of the two user namespaces. The third number specifies the range of the idmapping. For example, a mapping for user IDs such as 1000:1001:1 would indicate that user ID 1000 in the caller's user namespace is mapped to user ID 1001 in its ancestor user namespace. Since the map range is 1 only user ID 1000 is mapped. It is possible to specify up to 340 idmappings for each idmapping type. If any user IDs or group IDs are not mapped all files owned by that unmapped user or group ID will appear as being owned by the overflow user ID or overflow group ID respectively. Further details and instructions for setting up idmappings can be found in the .BR user_namespaces (7) man page. .IP In the common case the user namespace passed in .I userns_fd together with .BR MOUNT_ATTR_IDMAP in .I attr_set to create an idmapped mount will be the user namespace of a container. In other scenarios it will be a dedicated user namespace associated with a user's login session as is the case for portable home directories in .BR systemd-homed.service (8) ). It is also perfectly fine to create a dedicated user namespace for the sake of idmapping a mount. .IP Idmapped mounts can be useful in the following and a variety of other scenarios: .RS .RS .IP \(bu 2 sharing files between multiple users or multiple machines especially in complex scenarios. For example, idmapped mounts are used to implement portable home directories in .BR systemd-homed.service (8) where they allow users to move their home directory to an external storage device and use it on multiple computers where they are assigned different user IDs and group IDs. This effectively makes it possible to assign random user IDs and group IDs at login time. .IP \(bu sharing files from the host with unprivileged containers. This allows user to avoid having to change ownership permanently through .BR chown (2) . .IP \(bu idmapping a container's root filesystem. Users don't need to change ownership permanently through .BR chown (2) . Especially for large root filesystems using .BR chown (2) can be prohibitively expensive. .IP \(bu sharing files between containers with non-overlapping idmappings. .IP \(bu implementing discretionary access (DAC) permission checking for fileystems lacking a concept of ownership. .IP \(bu efficiently change ownership on a per-mount basis. In contrast to .BR chown (2) changing ownership of large sets of files is instantenous with idmapped mounts. This is especially useful when ownership of an entire root filesystem of a virtual machine or container is to be changed as we've mentioned above. With idmapped mounts a single .BR mount_setattr (2) system call will be sufficient to change the ownership of all files. .IP \(bu taking the current ownership into account. Idmappings specify precisely what a user or group ID is supposed to be mapped to. This contrasts with the .BR chown (2) system call which cannot by itself take the current ownership of the files it changes into account. It simply changes the ownership to the specified user ID and group ID. .IP \(bu locally and temporarily restricted ownership changes. Idmapped mounts allow to change ownership locally, restricting it to specific mounts, and temporarily as the ownership changes only apply as long as the mount exists. In contrast, changing ownership via the .BR chown (2) system call changes the ownership globally and permanently. .RE .RE .PP The .I propagation field is used to specify the propagation type of the mount or mount tree. Mount propagation options are mutually exclusive, i.e., the propagation values behave like an enum. The supported mount propagation settings are: .TP .B MS_PRIVATE Turn all mounts into private mounts. Mount and unmount events do not propagate into or out of this mount point. .TP .B MS_SHARED Turn all mounts into shared mounts. Mount points share events with members of a peer group. Mount and unmount events immediately under this mount point will propagate to the other mount points that are members of the peer group. Propagation here means that the same mount or unmount will automatically occur under all of the other mount points in the peer group. Conversely, mount and unmount events that take place under peer mount points will propagate to this mount point. .TP .B MS_SLAVE Turn all mounts into dependent mounts. Mount and unmount events propagate into this mount point from a shared peer group. Mount and unmount events under this mount point do not propagate to any peer. .TP .B MS_UNBINDABLE This is like a private mount, and in addition this mount can't be bind mounted. Attempts to bind mount this mount will fail. When a recursive bind mount is performed on a directory subtree, any bind mounts within the subtree are automatically pruned (i.e., not replicated) when replicating that subtree to produce the target subtree. .PP .SH RETURN VALUE On success, .BR mount_setattr (2) returns zero. On error, \-1 is returned and .I errno is set to indicate the cause of the error. .SH ERRORS .TP .B EBADF .I dfd is not a valid file descriptor. .TP .B EBADF .I userns_fd is not a valid file descriptor. .TP .B EBUSY The caller tried to change the mount to .BR MOUNT_ATTR_RDONLY but the mount still has files open for writing. .TP .B EINVAL The path specified via the .I dfd and .I path arguments to .BR mount_setattr (2) isn't a mountpoint. .TP .B EINVAL An unsupported value was set in .I flags. .TP .B EINVAL An unsupported value was specified in the .I attr_set field of .IR mount_attr . .TP .B EINVAL An unsupported value was specified in the .I attr_clr field of .IR mount_attr . .TP .B EINVAL An unsupported value was specified in the .I propagation field of .IR mount_attr . .TP .B EINVAL More than one of .BR MS_SHARED, .BR MS_SLAVE, .BR MS_PRIVATE, or .BR MS_UNBINDABLE was set in .I propagation field of .IR mount_attr . .TP .B EINVAL An access time setting was specified in the .I attr_set field without .BR MOUNT_ATTR__ATIME being set in the .I attr_clr field. .TP .B EINVAL .BR MOUNT_ATTR_IDMAP was specified in .IR attr_clr . .TP .B EINVAL A file descriptor value was specified in .I userns_fd which exceeds .BR INT_MAX . .TP .B EINVAL A valid file descriptor value was specified in .I userns_fd but the file descriptor wasn't a namespace file descriptor or did not refer to a user namespace. .TP .B EINVAL The underlying filesystem does not support idmapped mounts. .TP .B EINVAL The mount to idmap is not a detached/anonymous mount, i.e., the mount is already visible in the filesystem. .TP .B EINVAL A partial access time setting was specified in .I attr_clr instead of .BR MOUNT_ATTR__ATIME being set. .TP .B EINVAL The mount is located outside the caller's mount namespace. .TP .B EINVAL The underlying filesystem is mounted in a user namespace. .TP .B ENOENT A pathname was empty or had a nonexistent component. .TP .B ENOMEM When changing mount propagation to .BR MS_SHARED a new peer group id needs to be allocated for all mounts without a peer group id set. Allocation of this peer group id has failed. .TP .B ENOSPC When changing mount propagation to .BR MS_SHARED a new peer group id needs to be allocated for all mounts without a peer group id set. Allocation of this peer group id can fail. Note that technically further error codes are possible that are specific to the id allocation implementation used. .TP .B EPERM One of the mounts had at least one of .BR MOUNT_ATTR_NOATIME, .BR MOUNT_ATTR_NODEV, .BR MOUNT_ATTR_NODIRATIME, .BR MOUNT_ATTR_NOEXEC, .BR MOUNT_ATTR_NOSUID, or .BR MOUNT_ATTR_RDONLY set and the flag is locked. Mount attributes become locked on a mount if: .RS .IP \(bu 2 a new mount or mount tree is created causing mount propagation across user namespaces. The kernel will lock the aforementioned flags to protect these sensitive properties from being altered. .IP \(bu a new mount and user namespace pair is created. This happens for example when specifying .BR CLONE_NEWUSER | CLONE_NEWNS in .BR unshare (2), .BR clone (2), or .BR clone3 (2) . The aformentioned flags become locked to protect user namespaces from altering sensitive mount properties. .RE .TP .B EPERM A valid file descriptor value was specified in .I userns_fd but the file descriptor refers to the initial user namespace. .TP .B EPERM An already idmapped mount was supposed to be idmapped. .TP .B EPERM The caller does not have .I CAP_SYS_ADMIN in the initial user namespace. .SH VERSIONS .BR mount_setattr (2) first appeared in Linux 5.12. .\" commit 7d6beb71da3cc033649d641e1e608713b8220290 .\" commit 2a1867219c7b27f928e2545782b86daaf9ad50bd .\" commit 9caccd41541a6f7d6279928d9f971f6642c361af .SH CONFORMING TO .BR mount_setattr (2) is Linux specific. .SH NOTES .SS Extensibility In order to allow for future extensibility, .BR mount_setattr (2) along with other system calls such as .BR openat2 (2) and .BR clone3 (2) requires the user-space application to specify the size of the .I mount_attr structure that it is passing. By providing this information, it is possible for .BR mount_setattr (2) to provide both forwards- and backwards-compatibility, with .I size acting as an implicit version number. (Because new extension fields will always be appended, the structure size will always increase.) This extensibility design is very similar to other system calls such as .BR perf_setattr (2), .BR perf_event_open (2), .BR clone3 (2) and .BR openat2 (2) . .PP Let .I usize be the size of the structure as specified by the user-space application, and let .I ksize be the size of the structure which the kernel supports, then there are three cases to consider: .RS .IP \(bu 2 If .IR ksize equals .IR usize , then there is no version mismatch and .I attr can be used verbatim. .IP \(bu If .IR ksize is larger than .IR usize , then there are some extension fields that the kernel supports which the user-space application is unaware of. Because a zero value in any added extension field signifies a no-op, the kernel treats all of the extension fields not provided by the user-space application as having zero values. This provides backwards-compatibility. .IP \(bu If .IR ksize is smaller than .IR usize , then there are some extension fields which the user-space application is aware of but which the kernel does not support. Because any extension field must have its zero values signify a no-op, the kernel can safely ignore the unsupported extension fields if they are all zero. If any unsupported extension fields are non-zero, then \-1 is returned and .I errno is set to .BR E2BIG . This provides forwards-compatibility. .RE .PP Because the definition of .I struct mount_attr may change in the future (with new fields being added when system headers are updated), user-space applications should zero-fill .I struct mount_attr to ensure that recompiling the program with new headers will not result in spurious errors at runtime. The simplest way is to use a designated initializer: .PP .in +4n .EX struct mount_attr attr = { .attr_set = MOUNT_ATTR_RDONLY, .attr_clr = MOUNT_ATTR_NODEV }; .EE .in .PP or explicitly using .BR memset (3) or similar functions: .PP .in +4n .EX struct mount_attr attr; memset(&attr, 0, sizeof(attr)); attr.attr_set = MOUNT_ATTR_RDONLY; attr.attr_clr = MOUNT_ATTR_NODEV; .EE .in .PP A user-space application that wishes to determine which extensions the running kernel supports can do so by conducting a binary search on .IR size with a structure which has every byte nonzero (to find the largest value which doesn't produce an error of .BR E2BIG ) . .SH EXAMPLES .EX /* * This program allows the caller to create a new detached mount and set * various properties on it. */ #define _GNU_SOURCE #include #include #include #include #include #include #include #include #include #include #include static inline int mount_setattr(int dfd, const char *path, unsigned int flags, struct mount_attr *attr, size_t size) { return syscall(SYS_mount_setattr, dfd, path, flags, attr, size); } static inline int open_tree(int dfd, const char *filename, unsigned int flags) { return syscall(SYS_open_tree, dfd, filename, flags); } static inline int move_mount(int from_dfd, const char *from_pathname, int to_dfd, const char *to_pathname, unsigned int flags) { return syscall(SYS_move_mount, from_dfd, from_pathname, to_dfd, to_pathname, flags); } static const struct option longopts[] = { {"map-mount", required_argument, NULL, 'a'}, {"recursive", no_argument, NULL, 'b'}, {"read-only", no_argument, NULL, 'c'}, {"block-setid", no_argument, NULL, 'd'}, {"block-devices", no_argument, NULL, 'e'}, {"block-exec", no_argument, NULL, 'f'}, {"no-access-time", no_argument, NULL, 'g'}, { NULL, 0, NULL, 0 }, }; #define exit_log(format, ...) \\ ({ \\ fprintf(stderr, format, ##__VA_ARGS__); \\ exit(EXIT_FAILURE); \\ }) int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { int fd_userns = \-EBADF, index = 0; bool recursive = false; struct mount_attr *attr = &(struct mount_attr){}; const char *source, *target; int fd_tree, new_argc, ret; char *const *new_argv; while ((ret = getopt_long_only(argc, argv, "", longopts, &index)) != \-1) { switch (ret) { case 'a': fd_userns = open(optarg, O_RDONLY | O_CLOEXEC); if (fd_userns == \-1) exit_log("%m - Failed top open %s\en", optarg); break; case 'b': recursive = true; break; case 'c': attr->attr_set |= MOUNT_ATTR_RDONLY; break; case 'd': attr->attr_set |= MOUNT_ATTR_NOSUID; break; case 'e': attr->attr_set |= MOUNT_ATTR_NODEV; break; case 'f': attr->attr_set |= MOUNT_ATTR_NOEXEC; break; case 'g': attr->attr_set |= MOUNT_ATTR_NOATIME; attr->attr_clr |= MOUNT_ATTR__ATIME; break; default: exit_log("Invalid argument specified"); } } new_argv = &argv[optind]; new_argc = argc \- optind; if (new_argc < 2) exit_log("Missing source or target mountpoint\en"); source = new_argv[0]; target = new_argv[1]; fd_tree = open_tree(\-EBADF, source, OPEN_TREE_CLONE | OPEN_TREE_CLOEXEC | AT_EMPTY_PATH | (recursive ? AT_RECURSIVE : 0)); if (fd_tree == \-1) exit_log("%m - Failed to open %s\en", source); if (fd_userns >= 0) { attr->attr_set |= MOUNT_ATTR_IDMAP; attr->userns_fd = fd_userns; } ret = mount_setattr(fd_tree, "", AT_EMPTY_PATH | (recursive ? AT_RECURSIVE : 0), attr, sizeof(struct mount_attr)); if (ret == \-1) exit_log("%m - Failed to change mount attributes\en"); close(fd_userns); ret = move_mount(fd_tree, "", \-EBADF, target, MOVE_MOUNT_F_EMPTY_PATH); if (ret == \-1) exit_log("%m - Failed to attach mount to %s\en", target); close(fd_tree); exit(EXIT_SUCCESS); } .EE .fi .SH SEE ALSO .BR capabilities (7), .BR clone (2), .BR clone3 (2), .BR ext4 (5), .BR mount (2), .BR mount_namespaces (7), .BR newuidmap (1), .BR newgidmap (1), .BR proc (5), .BR unshare (2), .BR user_namespaces (7), .BR xattr (7), .BR xfs (5)