From: Christian Brauner <brauner@kernel.org>
Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2026 08:31:17 +0000 (+0200)
Subject: Merge patch series "Add bpf_sock_read_xattr() kfunc to read socket xattrs"
X-Git-Url: http://git.ipfire.org/gitweb/index.cgi?a=commitdiff_plain;h=8abc1c8badc11c859bb4ba43211611347e59c55c;p=thirdparty%2Flinux.git

Merge patch series "Add bpf_sock_read_xattr() kfunc to read socket xattrs"

Christian Brauner <brauner@kernel.org> says:

Add bpf_sock_read_xattr() kfunc to read socket xattrs

In c8db08110cbe ("Merge tag 'vfs-7.1-rc1.xattr' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/vfs/vfs")
we added support for extended attributes for sockets. This comes in two
flavors: sockfs and non-sockfs/filesystem sockets. Filesystem sockets
are actual filesystem objects so reading xattrs must use dedicated fs
helpers such as bpf_get_dentry_xattr() and bpf_get_file_xattr(). Those
are inherently sleeping operations. Sockfs sockets on the other hand
don't need to use sleeping operations as the underlying data structure
is lockless. In addition, retrieval of sockfs extended attributes often
happens from LSM hooks that only provide struct socket and it's
completely nonsensical to grab a reference to a file, then force a
sleeping operation to retrieve the xattr and drop the reference. We know
that the sockfs file cannot go away while the LSM hook runs.

This series adds a bpf_sock_read_xattr() kfunc that, given a struct
socket, reads a user.* extended attribute from the socket's sockfs inode
into a bpf_dynptr. Together with fsetxattr() from userspace this lets a
process label a socket with a user.* xattr and have a BPF LSM program
retrieve that label locklessly. The kfunc mirrors the existing
bpf_cgroup_read_xattr(), including the restriction to the user.*
namespace.

systemd uses user.* xattrs on sockets to implement socket rate limiting
and to tag sockets for other purposes [1] such as implementing a varlink
registry. There is currently no efficient way for a BPF program to read
those labels back. The new helper allows a listening socket marked with
an extended attribute to be read back during bind/connect and then act
on the connect()ing socket. Extended attributes make it possible to
allow an unprivileged user manager such as systemd --user to mark
sockets from userspace and then rediscover them or implement policies.

The kfunc is registered KF_RCU and only for BPF LSM programs. A struct
socket is only guaranteed to live in sockfs when an LSM socket hook hands
it out, which is what keeps SOCK_INODE() valid. Sockets that embed struct
socket outside sockfs (tun, tap) are only reachable from tracing programs
and are excluded by the registration. (Btw, for consistency it would
be nice to force allocation of struct socket from sockfs instead of
simply embedding it in e.g., struct tun_file which makes the SOCKFS_I()
pattern a hazard - at least outside of sockfs functions.)

The read never sleeps and takes no lock. For sockfs the value lives in
the inode's in-memory xattr store and simple_xattr_get() resolves it
with an RCU-protected rhashtable lookup, taking neither the inode lock
nor any xattr lock. The kfunc is therefore usable from both sleepable
and non-sleepable LSM hooks.

* patches from https://patch.msgid.link/20260617-work-bpf-sock-xattr-v1-0-a1276f7c9da3@kernel.org:
  selftests/bpf: Add test for bpf_sock_read_xattr() kfunc
  fs: Add bpf_sock_read_xattr() kfunc to read socket xattrs

Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260617-work-bpf-sock-xattr-v1-0-a1276f7c9da3@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner (Amutable) <brauner@kernel.org>
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8abc1c8badc11c859bb4ba43211611347e59c55c