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authorDavid Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>2007-10-16 23:29:46 -0700
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@woody.linux-foundation.org>2007-10-17 08:42:57 -0700
commit76181c134f87479fa13bf2548ddf2999055d34d4 (patch)
tree34694341c190e7ecdd3111ee48e4b98602ff012f /Documentation/keys.txt
parent398c95bdf2c24d7866692a40ba04425aef238cdd (diff)
KEYS: Make request_key() and co fundamentally asynchronous
Make request_key() and co fundamentally asynchronous to make it easier for NFS to make use of them. There are now accessor functions that do asynchronous constructions, a wait function to wait for construction to complete, and a completion function for the key type to indicate completion of construction. Note that the construction queue is now gone. Instead, keys under construction are linked in to the appropriate keyring in advance, and that anyone encountering one must wait for it to be complete before they can use it. This is done automatically for userspace. The following auxiliary changes are also made: (1) Key type implementation stuff is split from linux/key.h into linux/key-type.h. (2) AF_RXRPC provides a way to allocate null rxrpc-type keys so that AFS does not need to call key_instantiate_and_link() directly. (3) Adjust the debugging macros so that they're -Wformat checked even if they are disabled, and make it so they can be enabled simply by defining __KDEBUG to be consistent with other code of mine. (3) Documentation. [alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk: keys: missing word in documentation] Signed-off-by: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Alan Cox <alan@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/keys.txt')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/keys.txt93
1 files changed, 79 insertions, 14 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/keys.txt b/Documentation/keys.txt
index 947d57d5345..51652d39e61 100644
--- a/Documentation/keys.txt
+++ b/Documentation/keys.txt
@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@
This service allows cryptographic keys, authentication tokens, cross-domain
user mappings, and similar to be cached in the kernel for the use of
-filesystems other kernel services.
+filesystems and other kernel services.
Keyrings are permitted; these are a special type of key that can hold links to
other keys. Processes each have three standard keyring subscriptions that a
@@ -726,6 +726,15 @@ call, and the key released upon close. How to deal with conflicting keys due to
two different users opening the same file is left to the filesystem author to
solve.
+To access the key manager, the following header must be #included:
+
+ <linux/key.h>
+
+Specific key types should have a header file under include/keys/ that should be
+used to access that type. For keys of type "user", for example, that would be:
+
+ <keys/user-type.h>
+
Note that there are two different types of pointers to keys that may be
encountered:
@@ -791,6 +800,36 @@ payload contents" for more information.
passed to the key_type->request_key() op if it exists.
+(*) A key can be requested asynchronously by calling one of:
+
+ struct key *request_key_async(const struct key_type *type,
+ const char *description,
+ const char *callout_string);
+
+ or:
+
+ struct key *request_key_async_with_auxdata(const struct key_type *type,
+ const char *description,
+ const char *callout_string,
+ void *aux);
+
+ which are asynchronous equivalents of request_key() and
+ request_key_with_auxdata() respectively.
+
+ These two functions return with the key potentially still under
+ construction. To wait for contruction completion, the following should be
+ called:
+
+ int wait_for_key_construction(struct key *key, bool intr);
+
+ The function will wait for the key to finish being constructed and then
+ invokes key_validate() to return an appropriate value to indicate the state
+ of the key (0 indicates the key is usable).
+
+ If intr is true, then the wait can be interrupted by a signal, in which
+ case error ERESTARTSYS will be returned.
+
+
(*) When it is no longer required, the key should be released using:
void key_put(struct key *key);
@@ -924,7 +963,11 @@ DEFINING A KEY TYPE
A kernel service may want to define its own key type. For instance, an AFS
filesystem might want to define a Kerberos 5 ticket key type. To do this, it
-author fills in a struct key_type and registers it with the system.
+author fills in a key_type struct and registers it with the system.
+
+Source files that implement key types should include the following header file:
+
+ <linux/key-type.h>
The structure has a number of fields, some of which are mandatory:
@@ -1053,22 +1096,44 @@ The structure has a number of fields, some of which are mandatory:
as might happen when the userspace buffer is accessed.
- (*) int (*request_key)(struct key *key, struct key *authkey, const char *op,
+ (*) int (*request_key)(struct key_construction *cons, const char *op,
void *aux);
- This method is optional. If provided, request_key() and
- request_key_with_auxdata() will invoke this function rather than
- upcalling to /sbin/request-key to operate upon a key of this type.
+ This method is optional. If provided, request_key() and friends will
+ invoke this function rather than upcalling to /sbin/request-key to operate
+ upon a key of this type.
+
+ The aux parameter is as passed to request_key_async_with_auxdata() and
+ similar or is NULL otherwise. Also passed are the construction record for
+ the key to be operated upon and the operation type (currently only
+ "create").
+
+ This method is permitted to return before the upcall is complete, but the
+ following function must be called under all circumstances to complete the
+ instantiation process, whether or not it succeeds, whether or not there's
+ an error:
+
+ void complete_request_key(struct key_construction *cons, int error);
+
+ The error parameter should be 0 on success, -ve on error. The
+ construction record is destroyed by this action and the authorisation key
+ will be revoked. If an error is indicated, the key under construction
+ will be negatively instantiated if it wasn't already instantiated.
+
+ If this method returns an error, that error will be returned to the
+ caller of request_key*(). complete_request_key() must be called prior to
+ returning.
+
+ The key under construction and the authorisation key can be found in the
+ key_construction struct pointed to by cons:
+
+ (*) struct key *key;
+
+ The key under construction.
- The aux parameter is as passed to request_key_with_auxdata() or is NULL
- otherwise. Also passed are the key to be operated upon, the
- authorisation key for this operation and the operation type (currently
- only "create").
+ (*) struct key *authkey;
- This function should return only when the upcall is complete. Upon return
- the authorisation key will be revoked, and the target key will be
- negatively instantiated if it is still uninstantiated. The error will be
- returned to the caller of request_key*().
+ The authorisation key.
============================