> On Fri, 22 Jun 2007 13:03:03 -0700 Dave Hansen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Why do we need r/o bind mounts?
> 
> This feature allows a read-only view into a read-write filesystem.
> In the process of doing that, it also provides infrastructure for
> keeping track of the number of writers to any given mount.
> 
> This has a number of uses.  It allows chroots to have parts of
> filesystems writable.  It will be useful for containers in the future
> because users may have root inside a container, but should not
> be allowed to write to somefilesystems.  This also replaces 
> patches that vserver has had out of the tree for several years.
> 
> It allows security enhancement by making sure that parts of
> your filesystem read-only (such as when you don't trust your
> FTP server), when you don't want to have entire new filesystems
> mounted, or when you want atime selectively updated.
> I've been using the following script to test that the feature is
> working as desired.  It takes a directory and makes a regular
> bind and a r/o bind mount of it.  It then performs some normal
> filesystem operations on the three directories, including ones
> that are expected to fail, like creating a file on the r/o
> mount.

Doesn't selinux do some of this?

My overall reaction: owch.  There's a ton of tricksy code here and great
potential for us to accidentally break it in the future by forgetting a
mnt_may_write() as the kernel evolves.  And then there's the added
complexity and the added runtime overhead.

Balance that against some pretty obscure-looking benefits and I'm
struggling to see how a merge is justifiable?

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