For a while now we have supported file handles for pidfds. This has proven to be very useful. Extend the concept to cover namespaces as well. After this patchset it is possible to encode and decode namespace file handles using the commong name_to_handle_at() and open_by_handle_at() apis. Namespaces file descriptors can already be derived from pidfds which means they aren't subject to overmount protection bugs. IOW, it's irrelevant if the caller would not have access to an appropriate /proc/<pid>/ns/ directory as they could always just derive the namespace based on a pidfd already. It has the same advantage as pidfds. It's possible to reliably and for the lifetime of the system refer to a namespace without pinning any resources and to compare them. Permission checking is kept simple. If the caller is located in the namespace the file handle refers to they are able to open it otherwise they must hold privilege over the owning namespace of the relevant namespace. Both the network namespace and the mount namespace already have an associated cookie that isn't recycled and is fully exposed to userspace. Move this into ns_common and use the same id space for all namespaces so they can trivially and reliably be compared. There's more coming based on the iterator infrastructure but the series is large enough and focuses on file handles. Extensive selftests included. Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner <brauner@xxxxxxxxxx> --- Changes in v2: - Address various review comments. - Use a common NS_GET_ID ioctl() instead of individual ioctls. - Link to v1: https://lore.kernel.org/20250910-work-namespace-v1-0-4dd56e7359d8@xxxxxxxxxx --- Christian Brauner (33): pidfs: validate extensible ioctls nsfs: drop tautological ioctl() check nsfs: validate extensible ioctls block: use extensible_ioctl_valid() ns: move to_ns_common() to ns_common.h nsfs: add nsfs.h header ns: uniformly initialize ns_common cgroup: use ns_common_init() ipc: use ns_common_init() mnt: use ns_common_init() net: use ns_common_init() pid: use ns_common_init() time: use ns_common_init() user: use ns_common_init() uts: use ns_common_init() ns: remove ns_alloc_inum() nstree: make iterator generic mnt: support ns lookup cgroup: support ns lookup ipc: support ns lookup net: support ns lookup pid: support ns lookup time: support ns lookup user: support ns lookup uts: support ns lookup ns: add to_<type>_ns() to respective headers nsfs: add current_in_namespace() nsfs: support file handles nsfs: support exhaustive file handles nsfs: add missing id retrieval support tools: update nsfs.h uapi header selftests/namespaces: add identifier selftests selftests/namespaces: add file handle selftests block/blk-integrity.c | 8 +- fs/fhandle.c | 6 + fs/internal.h | 1 + fs/mount.h | 10 +- fs/namespace.c | 156 +-- fs/nsfs.c | 201 ++- fs/pidfs.c | 2 +- include/linux/cgroup.h | 5 + include/linux/exportfs.h | 6 + include/linux/fs.h | 14 + include/linux/ipc_namespace.h | 5 + include/linux/ns_common.h | 29 + include/linux/nsfs.h | 40 + include/linux/nsproxy.h | 11 - include/linux/nstree.h | 89 ++ include/linux/pid_namespace.h | 5 + include/linux/proc_ns.h | 32 +- include/linux/time_namespace.h | 9 + include/linux/user_namespace.h | 5 + include/linux/utsname.h | 5 + include/net/net_namespace.h | 6 + include/uapi/linux/fcntl.h | 1 + include/uapi/linux/nsfs.h | 15 +- init/main.c | 2 + ipc/msgutil.c | 1 + ipc/namespace.c | 12 +- ipc/shm.c | 2 + kernel/Makefile | 2 +- kernel/cgroup/cgroup.c | 2 + kernel/cgroup/namespace.c | 24 +- kernel/nstree.c | 233 ++++ kernel/pid_namespace.c | 13 +- kernel/time/namespace.c | 23 +- kernel/user_namespace.c | 17 +- kernel/utsname.c | 28 +- net/core/net_namespace.c | 59 +- tools/include/uapi/linux/nsfs.h | 17 +- tools/testing/selftests/namespaces/.gitignore | 2 + tools/testing/selftests/namespaces/Makefile | 7 + tools/testing/selftests/namespaces/config | 7 + .../selftests/namespaces/file_handle_test.c | 1429 ++++++++++++++++++++ tools/testing/selftests/namespaces/nsid_test.c | 986 ++++++++++++++ 42 files changed, 3257 insertions(+), 270 deletions(-) --- base-commit: 8f5ae30d69d7543eee0d70083daf4de8fe15d585 change-id: 20250905-work-namespace-c68826dda0d4
