Merge pull request #57519 (systemd-confinement)

Currently if you want to properly chroot a systemd service, you could do
it using BindReadOnlyPaths=/nix/store or use a separate derivation which
gathers the runtime closure of the service you want to chroot. The
former is the easier method and there is also a method directly offered
by systemd, called ProtectSystem, which still leaves the whole store
accessible. The latter however is a bit more involved, because you need
to bind-mount each store path of the runtime closure of the service you
want to chroot.

This can be achieved using pkgs.closureInfo and a small derivation that
packs everything into a systemd unit, which later can be added to
systemd.packages.

However, this process is a bit tedious, so the changes here implement
this in a more generic way.

Now if you want to chroot a systemd service, all you need to do is:

  {
    systemd.services.myservice = {
      description = "My Shiny Service";
      wantedBy = [ "multi-user.target" ];

      confinement.enable = true;
      serviceConfig.ExecStart = "${pkgs.myservice}/bin/myservice";
    };
  }

If more than the dependencies for the ExecStart* and ExecStop* (which
btw. also includes script and {pre,post}Start) need to be in the chroot,
it can be specified using the confinement.packages option. By default
(which uses the full-apivfs confinement mode), a user namespace is set
up as well and /proc, /sys and /dev are mounted appropriately.

In addition - and by default - a /bin/sh executable is provided, which
is useful for most programs that use the system() C library call to
execute commands via shell.

Unfortunately, there are a few limitations at the moment. The first
being that DynamicUser doesn't work in conjunction with tmpfs, because
systemd seems to ignore the TemporaryFileSystem option if DynamicUser is
enabled. I started implementing a workaround to do this, but I decided
to not include it as part of this pull request, because it needs a lot
more testing to ensure it's consistent with the behaviour without
DynamicUser.

The second limitation/issue is that RootDirectoryStartOnly doesn't work
right now, because it only affects the RootDirectory option and doesn't
include/exclude the individual bind mounts or the tmpfs.

A quirk we do have right now is that systemd tries to create a /usr
directory within the chroot, which subsequently fails. Fortunately, this
is just an ugly error and not a hard failure.

The changes also come with a changelog entry for NixOS 19.03, which is
why I asked for a vote of the NixOS 19.03 stable maintainers whether to
include it (I admit it's a bit late a few days before official release,
sorry for that):

  @samueldr:

    Via pull request comment[1]:

      +1 for backporting as this only enhances the feature set of nixos,
      and does not (at a glance) change existing behaviours.

    Via IRC:

      new feature: -1, tests +1, we're at zero, self-contained, with no
      global effects without actively using it, +1, I think it's good

  @lheckemann:

    Via pull request comment[2]:

      I'm neutral on backporting. On the one hand, as @samueldr says,
      this doesn't change any existing functionality. On the other hand,
      it's a new feature and we're well past the feature freeze, which
      AFAIU is intended so that new, potentially buggy features aren't
      introduced in the "stabilisation period". It is a cool feature
      though? :)

A few other people on IRC didn't have opposition either against late
inclusion into NixOS 19.03:

  @edolstra:  "I'm not against it"
  @Infinisil: "+1 from me as well"
  @grahamc:   "IMO its up to the RMs"

So that makes +1 from @samueldr, 0 from @lheckemann, 0 from @edolstra
and +1 from @Infinisil (even though he's not a release manager) and no
opposition from anyone, which is the reason why I'm merging this right
now.

I also would like to thank @Infinisil, @edolstra and @danbst for their
reviews.

[1]: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/57519#issuecomment-477322127
[2]: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/57519#issuecomment-477548395

1 files changed, 11 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/nixos/doc/manual/release-notes/rl-1903.xml b/nixos/doc/manual/release-notes/rl-1903.xml
index bbd3cf2e9db..7c94f6e9473 100644
--- a/nixos/doc/manual/release-notes/rl-1903.xml
+++ b/nixos/doc/manual/release-notes/rl-1903.xml
@@ -68,6 +68,17 @@
      <xref linkend="sec-kubernetes"/> for details.
     </para>
    </listitem>
+   <listitem>
+     <para>
+       There is now a set of <option>confinement</option> options for
+       <option>systemd.services</option>, which allows to restrict services
+       into a <citerefentry>
+        <refentrytitle>chroot</refentrytitle>
+        <manvolnum>2</manvolnum>
+      </citerefentry>ed environment that only contains the store paths from
+      the runtime closure of the service.
+     </para>
+   </listitem>
   </itemizedlist>
  </section>