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author | Daniel Baumann <daniel.baumann@progress-linux.org> | 2024-04-27 10:05:51 +0000 |
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committer | Daniel Baumann <daniel.baumann@progress-linux.org> | 2024-04-27 10:05:51 +0000 |
commit | 5d1646d90e1f2cceb9f0828f4b28318cd0ec7744 (patch) | |
tree | a94efe259b9009378be6d90eb30d2b019d95c194 /Documentation/filesystems/nfs/rpc-server-gss.rst | |
parent | Initial commit. (diff) | |
download | linux-upstream/5.10.209.tar.xz linux-upstream/5.10.209.zip |
Adding upstream version 5.10.209.upstream/5.10.209upstream
Signed-off-by: Daniel Baumann <daniel.baumann@progress-linux.org>
Diffstat (limited to '')
-rw-r--r-- | Documentation/filesystems/nfs/rpc-server-gss.rst | 93 |
1 files changed, 93 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/nfs/rpc-server-gss.rst b/Documentation/filesystems/nfs/rpc-server-gss.rst new file mode 100644 index 000000000..ccaea9e7c --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/filesystems/nfs/rpc-server-gss.rst @@ -0,0 +1,93 @@ +========================================= +rpcsec_gss support for kernel RPC servers +========================================= + +This document gives references to the standards and protocols used to +implement RPCGSS authentication in kernel RPC servers such as the NFS +server and the NFS client's NFSv4.0 callback server. (But note that +NFSv4.1 and higher don't require the client to act as a server for the +purposes of authentication.) + +RPCGSS is specified in a few IETF documents: + + - RFC2203 v1: https://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2203.txt + - RFC5403 v2: https://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc5403.txt + +There is a third version that we don't currently implement: + + - RFC7861 v3: https://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc7861.txt + +Background +========== + +The RPCGSS Authentication method describes a way to perform GSSAPI +Authentication for NFS. Although GSSAPI is itself completely mechanism +agnostic, in many cases only the KRB5 mechanism is supported by NFS +implementations. + +The Linux kernel, at the moment, supports only the KRB5 mechanism, and +depends on GSSAPI extensions that are KRB5 specific. + +GSSAPI is a complex library, and implementing it completely in kernel is +unwarranted. However GSSAPI operations are fundementally separable in 2 +parts: + +- initial context establishment +- integrity/privacy protection (signing and encrypting of individual + packets) + +The former is more complex and policy-independent, but less +performance-sensitive. The latter is simpler and needs to be very fast. + +Therefore, we perform per-packet integrity and privacy protection in the +kernel, but leave the initial context establishment to userspace. We +need upcalls to request userspace to perform context establishment. + +NFS Server Legacy Upcall Mechanism +================================== + +The classic upcall mechanism uses a custom text based upcall mechanism +to talk to a custom daemon called rpc.svcgssd that is provide by the +nfs-utils package. + +This upcall mechanism has 2 limitations: + +A) It can handle tokens that are no bigger than 2KiB + +In some Kerberos deployment GSSAPI tokens can be quite big, up and +beyond 64KiB in size due to various authorization extensions attacked to +the Kerberos tickets, that needs to be sent through the GSS layer in +order to perform context establishment. + +B) It does not properly handle creds where the user is member of more +than a few thousand groups (the current hard limit in the kernel is 65K +groups) due to limitation on the size of the buffer that can be send +back to the kernel (4KiB). + +NFS Server New RPC Upcall Mechanism +=================================== + +The newer upcall mechanism uses RPC over a unix socket to a daemon +called gss-proxy, implemented by a userspace program called Gssproxy. + +The gss_proxy RPC protocol is currently documented `here +<https://fedorahosted.org/gss-proxy/wiki/ProtocolDocumentation>`_. + +This upcall mechanism uses the kernel rpc client and connects to the gssproxy +userspace program over a regular unix socket. The gssproxy protocol does not +suffer from the size limitations of the legacy protocol. + +Negotiating Upcall Mechanisms +============================= + +To provide backward compatibility, the kernel defaults to using the +legacy mechanism. To switch to the new mechanism, gss-proxy must bind +to /var/run/gssproxy.sock and then write "1" to +/proc/net/rpc/use-gss-proxy. If gss-proxy dies, it must repeat both +steps. + +Once the upcall mechanism is chosen, it cannot be changed. To prevent +locking into the legacy mechanisms, the above steps must be performed +before starting nfsd. Whoever starts nfsd can guarantee this by reading +from /proc/net/rpc/use-gss-proxy and checking that it contains a +"1"--the read will block until gss-proxy has done its write to the file. |