Currently if you want to properly chroot a systemd service, you could do
it using BindReadOnlyPaths=/nix/store or use a separate derivation which
gathers the runtime closure of the service you want to chroot. The
former is the easier method and there is also a method directly offered
by systemd, called ProtectSystem, which still leaves the whole store
accessible. The latter however is a bit more involved, because you need
to bind-mount each store path of the runtime closure of the service you
want to chroot.
This can be achieved using pkgs.closureInfo and a small derivation that
packs everything into a systemd unit, which later can be added to
systemd.packages.
However, this process is a bit tedious, so the changes here implement
this in a more generic way.
Now if you want to chroot a systemd service, all you need to do is:
{
systemd.services.myservice = {
description = "My Shiny Service";
wantedBy = [ "multi-user.target" ];
confinement.enable = true;
serviceConfig.ExecStart = "${pkgs.myservice}/bin/myservice";
};
}
If more than the dependencies for the ExecStart* and ExecStop* (which
btw. also includes script and {pre,post}Start) need to be in the chroot,
it can be specified using the confinement.packages option. By default
(which uses the full-apivfs confinement mode), a user namespace is set
up as well and /proc, /sys and /dev are mounted appropriately.
In addition - and by default - a /bin/sh executable is provided, which
is useful for most programs that use the system() C library call to
execute commands via shell.
Unfortunately, there are a few limitations at the moment. The first
being that DynamicUser doesn't work in conjunction with tmpfs, because
systemd seems to ignore the TemporaryFileSystem option if DynamicUser is
enabled. I started implementing a workaround to do this, but I decided
to not include it as part of this pull request, because it needs a lot
more testing to ensure it's consistent with the behaviour without
DynamicUser.
The second limitation/issue is that RootDirectoryStartOnly doesn't work
right now, because it only affects the RootDirectory option and doesn't
include/exclude the individual bind mounts or the tmpfs.
A quirk we do have right now is that systemd tries to create a /usr
directory within the chroot, which subsequently fails. Fortunately, this
is just an ugly error and not a hard failure.
The changes also come with a changelog entry for NixOS 19.03, which is
why I asked for a vote of the NixOS 19.03 stable maintainers whether to
include it (I admit it's a bit late a few days before official release,
sorry for that):
@samueldr:
Via pull request comment[1]:
+1 for backporting as this only enhances the feature set of nixos,
and does not (at a glance) change existing behaviours.
Via IRC:
new feature: -1, tests +1, we're at zero, self-contained, with no
global effects without actively using it, +1, I think it's good
@lheckemann:
Via pull request comment[2]:
I'm neutral on backporting. On the one hand, as @samueldr says,
this doesn't change any existing functionality. On the other hand,
it's a new feature and we're well past the feature freeze, which
AFAIU is intended so that new, potentially buggy features aren't
introduced in the "stabilisation period". It is a cool feature
though? :)
A few other people on IRC didn't have opposition either against late
inclusion into NixOS 19.03:
@edolstra: "I'm not against it"
@Infinisil: "+1 from me as well"
@grahamc: "IMO its up to the RMs"
So that makes +1 from @samueldr, 0 from @lheckemann, 0 from @edolstra
and +1 from @Infinisil (even though he's not a release manager) and no
opposition from anyone, which is the reason why I'm merging this right
now.
I also would like to thank @Infinisil, @edolstra and @danbst for their
reviews.
[1]: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/57519#issuecomment-477322127
[2]: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/57519#issuecomment-477548395
Currently, if you want to properly chroot a systemd service, you could
do it using BindReadOnlyPaths=/nix/store (which is not what I'd call
"properly", because the whole store is still accessible) or use a
separate derivation that gathers the runtime closure of the service you
want to chroot. The former is the easier method and there is also a
method directly offered by systemd, called ProtectSystem, which still
leaves the whole store accessible. The latter however is a bit more
involved, because you need to bind-mount each store path of the runtime
closure of the service you want to chroot.
This can be achieved using pkgs.closureInfo and a small derivation that
packs everything into a systemd unit, which later can be added to
systemd.packages. That's also what I did several times[1][2] in the
past.
However, this process got a bit tedious, so I decided that it would be
generally useful for NixOS, so this very implementation was born.
Now if you want to chroot a systemd service, all you need to do is:
{
systemd.services.yourservice = {
description = "My Shiny Service";
wantedBy = [ "multi-user.target" ];
chroot.enable = true;
serviceConfig.ExecStart = "${pkgs.myservice}/bin/myservice";
};
}
If more than the dependencies for the ExecStart* and ExecStop* (which
btw. also includes "script" and {pre,post}Start) need to be in the
chroot, it can be specified using the chroot.packages option. By
default (which uses the "full-apivfs"[3] confinement mode), a user
namespace is set up as well and /proc, /sys and /dev are mounted
appropriately.
In addition - and by default - a /bin/sh executable is provided as well,
which is useful for most programs that use the system() C library call
to execute commands via shell. The shell providing /bin/sh is dash
instead of the default in NixOS (which is bash), because it's way more
lightweight and after all we're chrooting because we want to lower the
attack surface and it should be only used for "/bin/sh -c something".
Prior to submitting this here, I did a first implementation of this
outside[4] of nixpkgs, which duplicated the "pathSafeName" functionality
from systemd-lib.nix, just because it's only a single line.
However, I decided to just re-use the one from systemd here and
subsequently made it available when importing systemd-lib.nix, so that
the systemd-chroot implementation also benefits from fixes to that
functionality (which is now a proper function).
Unfortunately, we do have a few limitations as well. The first being
that DynamicUser doesn't work in conjunction with tmpfs, because it
already sets up a tmpfs in a different path and simply ignores the one
we define. We could probably solve this by detecting it and try to
bind-mount our paths to that different path whenever DynamicUser is
enabled.
The second limitation/issue is that RootDirectoryStartOnly doesn't work
right now, because it only affects the RootDirectory option and not the
individual bind mounts or our tmpfs. It would be helpful if systemd
would have a way to disable specific bind mounts as well or at least
have some way to ignore failures for the bind mounts/tmpfs setup.
Another quirk we do have right now is that systemd tries to create a
/usr directory within the chroot, which subsequently fails. Fortunately,
this is just an ugly error and not a hard failure.
[1]: https://github.com/headcounter/shabitica/blob/3bb01728a0237ad5e7/default.nix#L43-L62
[2]: https://github.com/aszlig/avonc/blob/dedf29e092481a33dc/nextcloud.nix#L103-L124
[3]: The reason this is called "full-apivfs" instead of just "full" is
to make room for a *real* "full" confinement mode, which is more
restrictive even.
[4]: https://github.com/aszlig/avonc/blob/92a20bece4df54625e/systemd-chroot.nix
Signed-off-by: aszlig <aszlig@nix.build>
This should make the composability of kernel configurations more straigthforward.
- now distinguish freeform options from tristate ones
- will look for a structured config in kernelPatches too
one can now access the structuredConfig from a kernel via linux_test.configfile.structuredConfig
in order to reinject it into another kernel, no need to rewrite the config from scratch
The following merge strategies are used in case of conflict:
-- freeform items must be equal or they conflict (mergeEqualOption)
-- for tristate (y/m/n) entries, I use the mergeAnswer strategy which takes the best available value, "best" being defined by the user (by default "y" > "m" > "n", e.g. if one entry is both marked "y" and "n", "y" wins)
-- if one item is both marked optional/mandatory, mandatory wins (mergeFalseByDefault)
Right now it's not at all obvious that one can override this option
using `services.logind.extraConfig`; we might as well add an option
for `killUserProcesses` directly so it's clear and documented.
The new reuse behaviour is cool and really useful but it breaks one of
my use cases. When using kexec, I have a script which will unlock the
disks in my initrd. However, do_open_passphrase will fail if the disk is
already unlocked.
