RFC: Adding a ``user'' mount option

[Robert Watson]

On Mon, 3 Apr 2006, Joe Marcus Clarke wrote:

> I know we have vfs.usermount, but this is not always sufficient since the 
> user has to own the mount point in question.  What I propose is to add a 
> ``user'' mount option à la Linux.  This would make mount and umount setuid 
> root, but would allow much more flexibility when it comes to removable media 
> and desktop systems.

I would suggest that an extremely careful security audit of the userspace and 
kernel mount and unmount code is due -- especially things like the 
per-filesystem mount code (mount_nfs, etc).  I'm not against the principle of 
this though.

Also, I'm not 100% sure we should make the getuid() check return a hard error 
in user space.  Let's continue to let the kernel code make the access control 
decision here.

Robert N M Watson

>
> I'm not a src committer, so this isn't a threat to commit.  I'm more
> interested in getting feedback, and hopefully some src committer
> interest.  I think this would really benefit desktop FreeBSD.
>
> http://www.marcuscom.com/downloads/usermount.diff
>
> Joe
>
> -- 
> Joe Marcus Clarke
> FreeBSD GNOME Team      ::      gnome at FreeBSD.org
> FreeNode / #freebsd-gnome
> http://www.FreeBSD.org/gnome
>