> On Wed, May 12, 2010 at 12:28:28PM -0700, Chris Wright wrote:
> > * Greg KH (
greg@kroah.com) wrote:
> > > On Wed, May 12, 2010 at 11:47:13AM -0700, Chris Wright wrote:
> > > > The PCI config space bin_attr read handler has a hardcoded CAP_SYS_ADMIN
> > > > check to verify privileges before allowing a user to read device
> > > > dependent config space. This is meant to protect from an unprivileged
> > > > user potentially locking up the box.
> > > >
> > > > When assigning a PCI device directly to a guest with libvirt and KVM, the
> > > > sysfs config space file is chown'd to the user that the KVM guest will
> > > > run as. The guest needs to have full access to the device's config
> > > > space since it's responsible for driving the device. However, despite
> > > > being the owner of the sysfs file, the CAP_SYS_ADMIN check will not
> > > > allow read access beyond the config header.
> > > >
> > > > This patch adds a new bin_attr->read_file() callback which adds a struct
> > > > file to the normal argument list. This allows an implementation such as
> > > > PCI config space bin_attr read_file handler to check both inode
> > > > permission as well as privileges to determine whether to allow
> > > > privileged actions through the handler.
> > >
> > > Ick, this is all because we like showing different information if the
> > > user is "privileged or not" :(
> >
> > yup
> >
> > > Turns out, that this probably isn't the best user api to implement,
> > > remind me never to do that again...
> >
> > Yeah, it's challenging to deal with. Alternative here is a new config
> > sysfs entry that doesn't have this 'feature'. (I looked into trying to
> > allow manageing the internal capable() check externally, not so pretty).
>
> That would require people to update libpci and maybe their scripts as
> well, which wouldn't be as good.