Re: [PATCH v3 resend 1/2] mm: Add an F_SEAL_FUTURE_WRITE seal to memfd

[Joel Fernandes <joel@joelfernandes.org>]

On Fri, Nov 09, 2018 at 08:02:14PM +0000, Michael Tirado wrote:
[...]
> > > That aside: I wonder whether a better API would be something that
> > > allows you to create a new readonly file descriptor, instead of
> > > fiddling with the writability of an existing fd.
> >
> > Every now and then I try to write a patch to prevent using proc to reopen
> > a file with greater permission than the original open.
> >
> > I like your idea to have a clean way to reopen a a memfd with reduced
> > permissions. But I would make it a syscall instead and maybe make it only
> > work for memfd at first.  And the proc issue would need to be fixed, too.
> 
> IMO the best solution would handle the issue at memfd creation time by
> removing the race condition.

I agree, this is another idea I'm exploring. We could add a new .open
callback to shmem_file_operations and check for seals there.

thanks,

 - Joel