# Foreword This document describes an on-going project to support FUSE filesystems within the sentry. This is intended to become the final documentation for this subsystem, and is therefore written in the past tense. However FUSE support is currently incomplete and the document will be updated as things progress. # FUSE: Filesystem in Userspace The sentry supports dispatching filesystem operations to a FUSE server, allowing FUSE filesystem to be used with a sandbox. ## Overview FUSE has two main components: 1. A client kernel driver (canonically `fuse.ko` in Linux), which forwards filesystem operations (usually initiated by syscalls) to the server. 2. A server, which is a userspace daemon that implements the actual filesystem. The sentry implements the client component, which allows a server daemon running within the sandbox to implement a filesystem within the sandbox. A FUSE filesystem is initialized with `mount(2)`, typically with the help of a utility like `fusermount(1)`. Various mount options exist for establishing ownership and access permissions on the filesystem, but the most important mount option is a file descriptor used to establish communication between the client and server. The FUSE device FD is obtained by opening `/dev/fuse`. During regular operation, the client and server use the FUSE protocol described in `fuse(4)` to service filesystem operations. See the "Protocol" section below for more information about this protocol. The core of the sentry support for FUSE is the client-side implementation of this protocol. ## FUSE in the Sentry The sentry's FUSE client targets VFS2 and has the following components: - An implementation of `/dev/fuse`. - A VFS2 filesystem for mapping syscalls to FUSE ops. Since we're targeting VFS2, one point of contention may be the lack of inodes in VFS2. We can tentatively implement a kernfs-based filesystem to bridge the gap in APIs. The kernfs base functionality can serve the role of the Linux inode cache and, the filesystem can map VFS2 syscalls to kernfs inode operations; see the `kernfs.Inode` interface. The FUSE protocol lends itself well to marshaling with `go_marshal`. The various request and response packets can be defined in the ABI package and converted to and from the wire format using `go_marshal`. ### Design Goals - While filesystem performance is always important, the sentry's FUSE support is primarily concerned with compatibility, with performance as a secondary concern. - Avoiding deadlocks from a hung server daemon. - Consider the potential for denial of service from a malicious server daemon. Protecting itself from userspace is already a design goal for the sentry, but needs additional consideration for FUSE. Normally, an operating system doesn't rely on userspace to make progress with filesystem operations. Since this changes with FUSE, it opens up the possibility of creating a chain of dependencies controlled by userspace, which could affect an entire sandbox. For example: a FUSE op can block a syscall, which could be holding a subsystem lock, which can then block another task goroutine. ### Milestones Below are some broad goals to aim for while implementing FUSE in the sentry. Many FUSE ops can be grouped into broad categories of functionality, and most ops can be implemented in parallel. #### Minimal client that can mount a trivial FUSE filesystem. - Implement `/dev/fuse` - a character device used to establish an FD for communication between the sentry and the server daemon. - Implement basic FUSE ops like `FUSE_INIT`, `FUSE_DESTROY`. #### Read-only mount with basic file operations - Implement the majority of file, directory and file descriptor FUSE ops. For this milestone, we can skip uncommon or complex operations like mmap, mknod, file locking, poll, and extended attributes. We can stub these out along with any ops that modify the filesystem. The exact list of required ops are to be determined, but the goal is to mount a real filesystem as read-only, and be able to read contents from the filesystem in the sentry. #### Full read-write support - Implement the remaining FUSE ops and decide if we can omit rarely used operations like ioctl. # Appendix ## FUSE Protocol The FUSE protocol is a request-response protocol. All requests are initiated by the client. The wire-format for the protocol is raw C structs serialized to memory. All FUSE requests begin with the following request header: ```c struct fuse_in_header { uint32_t len; // Length of the request, including this header. uint32_t opcode; // Requested operation. uint64_t unique; // A unique identifier for this request. uint64_t nodeid; // ID of the filesystem object being operated on. uint32_t uid; // UID of the requesting process. uint32_t gid; // GID of the requesting process. uint32_t pid; // PID of the requesting process. uint32_t padding; }; ``` The request is then followed by a payload specific to the `opcode`. All responses begin with this response header: ```c struct fuse_out_header { uint32_t len; // Length of the response, including this header. int32_t error; // Status of the request, 0 if success. uint64_t unique; // The unique identifier from the corresponding request. }; ``` The response payload also depends on the request `opcode`. If `error != 0`, the response payload must be empty. ### Operations The following is a list of all FUSE operations used in `fuse_in_header.opcode` as of Linux v4.4, and a brief description of their purpose. These are defined in `uapi/linux/fuse.h`. Many of these have a corresponding request and response payload struct; `fuse(4)` has details for some of these. We also note how these operations map to the sentry virtual filesystem. #### FUSE meta-operations These operations are specific to FUSE and don't have a corresponding action in a generic filesystem. - `FUSE_INIT`: This operation initializes a new FUSE filesystem, and is the first message sent by the client after mount. This is used for version and feature negotiation. This is related to `mount(2)`. - `FUSE_DESTROY`: Teardown a FUSE filesystem, related to `unmount(2)`. - `FUSE_INTERRUPT`: Interrupts an in-flight operation, specified by the `fuse_in_header.unique` value provided in the corresponding request header. The client can send at most one of these per request, and will enter an uninterruptible wait for a reply. The server is expected to reply promptly. - `FUSE_FORGET`: A hint to the server that server should evict the indicate node from any caches. This is wired up to `(struct super_operations).evict_inode` in Linux, which is in turned hooked as the inode cache shrinker which is typically triggered by system memory pressure. - `FUSE_BATCH_FORGET`: Batch version of `FUSE_FORGET`. #### Filesystem Syscalls These FUSE ops map directly to an equivalent filesystem syscall, or family of syscalls. The relevant syscalls have a similar name to the operation, unless otherwise noted. Node creation: - `FUSE_MKNOD` - `FUSE_MKDIR` - `FUSE_CREATE`: This is equivalent to `open(2)` and `creat(2)`, which atomically creates and opens a node. Node attributes and extended attributes: - `FUSE_GETATTR` - `FUSE_SETATTR` - `FUSE_SETXATTR` - `FUSE_GETXATTR` - `FUSE_LISTXATTR` - `FUSE_REMOVEXATTR` Node link manipulation: - `FUSE_READLINK` - `FUSE_LINK` - `FUSE_SYMLINK` - `FUSE_UNLINK` Directory operations: - `FUSE_RMDIR` - `FUSE_RENAME` - `FUSE_RENAME2` - `FUSE_OPENDIR`: `open(2)` for directories. - `FUSE_RELEASEDIR`: `close(2)` for directories. - `FUSE_READDIR` - `FUSE_READDIRPLUS` - `FUSE_FSYNCDIR`: `fsync(2)` for directories. - `FUSE_LOOKUP`: Establishes a unique identifier for a FS node. This is reminiscent of `VirtualFilesystem.GetDentryAt` in that it resolves a path component to a node. However the returned identifier is opaque to the client. The server must remember this mapping, as this is how the client will reference the node in the future. File operations: - `FUSE_OPEN`: `open(2)` for files. - `FUSE_RELEASE`: `close(2)` for files. - `FUSE_FSYNC` - `FUSE_FALLOCATE` - `FUSE_SETUPMAPPING`: Creates a memory map on a file for `mmap(2)`. - `FUSE_REMOVEMAPPING`: Removes a memory map for `munmap(2)`. File locking: - `FUSE_GETLK` - `FUSE_SETLK` - `FUSE_SETLKW` - `FUSE_COPY_FILE_RANGE` File descriptor operations: - `FUSE_IOCTL` - `FUSE_POLL` - `FUSE_LSEEK` Filesystem operations: - `FUSE_STATFS` #### Permissions - `FUSE_ACCESS` is used to check if a node is accessible, as part of many syscall implementations. Maps to `vfs.FilesystemImpl.AccessAt` in the sentry. #### I/O Operations These ops are used to read and write file pages. They're used to implement both I/O syscalls like `read(2)`, `write(2)` and `mmap(2)`. - `FUSE_READ` - `FUSE_WRITE` #### Miscellaneous - `FUSE_FLUSH`: Used by the client to indicate when a file descriptor is closed. Distinct from `FUSE_FSYNC`, which corresponds to an `fsync(2)` syscall from the user. Maps to `vfs.FileDescriptorImpl.Release` in the sentry. - `FUSE_BMAP`: Old address space API for block defrag. Probably not needed. - `FUSE_NOTIFY_REPLY`: [TODO: what does this do?] # References - [fuse(4) Linux manual page](https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man4/fuse.4.html) - [Linux kernel FUSE documentation](https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/filesystems/fuse.html) - [The reference implementation of the Linux FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) interface](https://github.com/libfuse/libfuse) - [The kernel interface of FUSE](https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/include/uapi/linux/fuse.h)