Software:Chroot - MdsWiki
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When a remote client connects to an MDSplus server, the server determines if the client has been permitted to connect and which account the server should run under. The system manager of the MDSplus server defines the policies regarding who is permitted to connect (either by GSI credentials with MDSplus/Globus or by client username and network address with non-Globus MDSplus) and the account each user should use on the server system. Since the MDSplus server process can execute arbitrary commands or call routines in any shared libraries on behalf of the remote client, the remote client essentially has the ability to perform any operation as would be available if the client had logged into the server system directly. It is possible to greatly restrict the operations available to the client by using chroot on systems that support it. Chroot runs a command with a special root directory. Only the files in the special root directory hierarchy are visible to that process and any processes created by it. The special root directory must be constructed such that it contains enough of the root file system to operate the MDSplus server program and potentially the data files that you want to serve to the clients. Once you have set up the special root then all that is needed is to configure your mdsip service to use the special root. The mdsipd script typically used to start the mdsip service has been modified to accept a fourth parameter which is the special root directory. If the fourth parameter is specified, mdsipd will chroot to the special root and then run the mdsip program. We have configured a special root on a RedHat 8.0 system to demonstrate this technique. The following describes the steps that were taken to make mdsip run with a special root file system.

Prepare the special root

The feature of mount --bind on Linux makes the preparation of a special root fairly easy to include most of the files needed for mdsip to operate. We created a special root using the following script:

#!/bin/sh
#
#  mk_mdsplus_root
#
mkdir $1
mkdir $1/lib
mkdir $1/etc
cp /etc/passwd $1/etc          # You can make a special/reduced passwd file for account mapping
cp /etc/group  $1/etc          # Can be special/reduced
cp /etc/nsswitch.conf $1/etc   # Needed to specify how account names, hostnames etc are resolved.
cp /etc/mdsip.hosts $1/etc     # Remote client to local user account mappings
cp /etc/services $1/etc        # Could contain only mdsip definition
cp /etc/resolv.conf $1/etc     # DNS specification for hostname resolution
cp /etc/localtime $1/etc       # Time conversion
mkdir -p $1$MDSPLUS_DIR
mkdir $1/etc/grid-security     # If using globus
mkdir -p $1$GLOBUS_LOCATION    # If using globus
mkdir $1/bin
cp  /bin/chmod $1/bin          # If using SetMDSplusFileProtection for tree file creation
cp  /bin/chgrp $1/bin          # If using SetMDSplusFileProtection
cp  -P /bin/sh    $1/bin
cp  -P /bin/bash  $1/bin
cp  -P /bin/tcsh  $1/bin
mkdir $1/dev
cp /dev/null $1/dev
mkdir $1/mdsplus_trees         # Include data directories if appropriate

Use mount to load required files to the new root

You can add the required mount points to fstab on the server system modifying the actual directories to match your configuration.

/usr/local/mdsplus /newroot/usr/local/mdsplus none ro,bind
/usr/local/globus  /newroot/usr/local/globus  none ro,bind
/etc/grid-security /newroot/etc/grid-security none ro,bind
/lib               /newroot/lib               none ro,bind
/mdsplus_trees     /newroot/mdsplus_trees     none ro,bind

Modify /etc/xinetd.d/mdsip to include new root

You need to modify the xinetd file for mdsip to include the new root. (NOTE: The new /usr/local/mdsplus/bin/mdsipd script which supports chroot was added to cvs on October 21, 2003 so you may to update your version by getting it from the MDSplus cvs repository). The /etc/xinetd.d/mdsip file should then look like:

# default: on
# description: The mdsip server serves mdsip sessions; it the \
#       standard mdsip.hosts and logs into /var/log/mdsplus.
service mdsip
{
        socket_type     = stream
        wait            = no
        cps             = 1000 5
        instances       = UNLIMITED
        user            = root
        server          = /usr/local/mdsplus/bin/mdsipd
        server_args     = mdsip /var/log/mdsplus/mdsipd /etc/mdsip.hosts /newroot
        log_on_failure  += USERID
        log_on_success  += USERID
}

Reload xinetd

Finally you must reload xinetd to complete the change.

# /etc/rc.d/init.d/xinetd reload

You can test your new configuration by evaluating an expression such as 'spawn("/bin/ls")'. With the original configuration you would have seen the output of ls in the mdsip access log file. With the new root you should get an error since ls is not present in the new root.