Merge tag 'v6.5/vfs.mount' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/vfs/vfs

Merge tag 'v6.5/vfs.mount' of git://git./linux/kernel/git/vfs/vfs

Pull vfs mount updates from Christian Brauner:
 "This contains the work to extend move_mount() to allow adding a mount
  beneath the topmost mount of a mount stack.

  There are two LWN articles about this. One covers the original patch
  series in [1]. The other in [2] summarizes the session and roughly the
  discussion between Al and me at LSFMM. The second article also goes
  into some good questions from attendees.

  Since all details are found in the relevant commit with a technical
  dive into semantics and locking at the end I'm only adding the
  motivation and core functionality for this from commit message and
  leave out the invasive details. The code is also heavily commented and
  annotated as well which was explicitly requested.

  TL;DR:

    > mount -t ext4 /dev/sda /mnt
      |
      └─/mnt    /dev/sda    ext4

    > mount --beneath -t xfs /dev/sdb /mnt
      |
      └─/mnt    /dev/sdb    xfs
        └─/mnt  /dev/sda    ext4

    > umount /mnt
      |
      └─/mnt    /dev/sdb    xfs

  The longer motivation is that various distributions are adding or are
  in the process of adding support for system extensions and in the
  future configuration extensions through various tools. A more detailed
  explanation on system and configuration extensions can be found on the
  manpage which is listed below at [3].

  System extension images may – dynamically at runtime — extend the
  /usr/ and /opt/ directory hierarchies with additional files. This is
  particularly useful on immutable system images where a /usr/ and/or
  /opt/ hierarchy residing on a read-only file system shall be extended
  temporarily at runtime without making any persistent modifications.

  When one or more system extension images are activated, their /usr/
  and /opt/ hierarchies are combined via overlayfs with the same
  hierarchies of the host OS, and the host /usr/ and /opt/ overmounted
  with it ("merging"). When they are deactivated, the mount point is
  disassembled — again revealing the unmodified original host version of
  the hierarchy ("unmerging"). Merging thus makes the extension's
  resources suddenly appear below the /usr/ and /opt/ hierarchies as if
  they were included in the base OS image itself. Unmerging makes them
  disappear again, leaving in place only the files that were shipped
  with the base OS image itself.

  System configuration images are similar but operate on directories
  containing system or service configuration.

  On nearly all modern distributions mount propagation plays a crucial
  role and the rootfs of the OS is a shared mount in a peer group
  (usually with peer group id 1):

     TARGET  SOURCE  FSTYPE  PROPAGATION  MNT_ID  PARENT_ID
     /       /       ext4    shared:1     29      1

  On such systems all services and containers run in a separate mount
  namespace and are pivot_root()ed into their rootfs. A separate mount
  namespace is almost always used as it is the minimal isolation
  mechanism services have. But usually they are even much more isolated
  up to the point where they almost become indistinguishable from
  containers.

  Mount propagation again plays a crucial role here. The rootfs of all
  these services is a slave mount to the peer group of the host rootfs.
  This is done so the service will receive mount propagation events from
  the host when certain files or directories are updated.

  In addition, the rootfs of each service, container, and sandbox is
  also a shared mount in its separate peer group:

     TARGET  SOURCE  FSTYPE  PROPAGATION         MNT_ID  PARENT_ID
     /       /       ext4    shared:24 master:1  71      47

  For people not too familiar with mount propagation, the master:1 means
  that this is a slave mount to peer group 1. Which as one can see is
  the host rootfs as indicated by shared:1 above. The shared:24
  indicates that the service rootfs is a shared mount in a separate peer
  group with peer group id 24.

  A service may run other services. Such nested services will also have
  a rootfs mount that is a slave to the peer group of the outer service
  rootfs mount.

  For containers things are just slighly different. A container's rootfs
  isn't a slave to the service's or host rootfs' peer group. The rootfs
  mount of a container is simply a shared mount in its own peer group:

     TARGET                    SOURCE  FSTYPE  PROPAGATION  MNT_ID  PARENT_ID
     /home/ubuntu/debian-tree  /       ext4    shared:99    61      60

  So whereas services are isolated OS components a container is treated
  like a separate world and mount propagation into it is restricted to a
  single well known mount that is a slave to the peer group of the
  shared mount /run on the host:

     TARGET                  SOURCE              FSTYPE  PROPAGATION  MNT_ID  PARENT_ID
     /propagate/debian-tree  /run/host/incoming  tmpfs   master:5     71      68

  Here, the master:5 indicates that this mount is a slave to the peer
  group with peer group id 5. This allows to propagate mounts into the
  container and served as a workaround for not being able to insert
  mounts into mount namespaces directly. But the new mount api does
  support inserting mounts directly. For the interested reader the
  blogpost in [4] might be worth reading where I explain the old and the
  new approach to inserting mounts into mount namespaces.

  Containers of course, can themselves be run as services. They often
  run full systems themselves which means they again run services and
  containers with the exact same propagation settings explained above.

  The whole system is designed so that it can be easily updated,
  including all services in various fine-grained ways without having to
  enter every single service's mount namespace which would be
  prohibitively expensive. The mount propagation layout has been
  carefully chosen so it is possible to propagate updates for system
  extensions and configurations from the host into all services.

  The simplest model to update the whole system is to mount on top of
  /usr, /opt, or /etc on the host. The new mount on /usr, /opt, or /etc
  will then propagate into every service. This works cleanly the first
  time. However, when the system is updated multiple times it becomes
  necessary to unmount the first update on /opt, /usr, /etc and then
  propagate the new update. But this means, there's an interval where
  the old base system is accessible. This has to be avoided to protect
  against downgrade attacks.

  The vfs already exposes a mechanism to userspace whereby mounts can be
  mounted beneath an existing mount. Such mounts are internally referred
  to as "tucked". The patch series exposes the ability to mount beneath
  a top mount through the new MOVE_MOUNT_BENEATH flag for the
  move_mount() system call. This allows userspace to seamlessly upgrade
  mounts. After this series the only thing that will have changed is
  that mounting beneath an existing mount can be done explicitly instead
  of just implicitly.

  The crux is that the proposed mechanism already exists and that it is
  so powerful as to cover cases where mounts are supposed to be updated
  with new versions. Crucially, it offers an important flexibility.
  Namely that updates to a system may either be forced or can be delayed
  and the umount of the top mount be left to a service if it is a
  cooperative one"

Link: https://lwn.net/Articles/927491
Link: https://lwn.net/Articles/934094
Link: https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man8/systemd-sysext.8.html
Link: https://brauner.io/2023/02/28/mounting-into-mount-namespaces.html
Link: https://github.com/flatcar/sysext-bakery
Link: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Unified_Kernel_Support_Phase_1
Link: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Unified_Kernel_Support_Phase_2
Link: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/26013
* tag 'v6.5/vfs.mount' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/vfs/vfs:
  fs: allow to mount beneath top mount
  fs: use a for loop when locking a mount
  fs: properly document __lookup_mnt()
  fs: add path_mounted()