SPEC.md 13 KB
Container Specification - v1
This is the standard configuration for version 1 containers. It includes namespaces, standard filesystem setup, a default Linux capability set, and information about resource reservations. It also has information about any populated environment settings for the processes running inside a container.
Along with the configuration of how a container is created the standard also discusses actions that can be performed on a container to manage and inspect information about the processes running inside.
The v1 profile is meant to be able to accommodate the majority of applications with a strong security configuration.
System Requirements and Compatibility
Minimum requirements:
- Kernel version - 3.10 recommended 2.6.2x minimum(with backported patches)
- Mounted cgroups with each subsystem in its own hierarchy
Namespaces
| Flag | Enabled | | ------------ | ------- | | CLONE_NEWPID | 1 | | CLONE_NEWUTS | 1 | | CLONE_NEWIPC | 1 | | CLONE_NEWNET | 1 | | CLONE_NEWNS | 1 | | CLONE_NEWUSER | 1 |
Namespaces are created for the container via the clone syscall.
Filesystem
A root filesystem must be provided to a container for execution. The container will use this root filesystem (rootfs) to jail and spawn processes inside where the binaries and system libraries are local to that directory. Any binaries to be executed must be contained within this rootfs.
Mounts that happen inside the container are automatically cleaned up when the container exits as the mount namespace is destroyed and the kernel will unmount all the mounts that were setup within that namespace.
For a container to execute properly there are certain filesystems that are required to be mounted within the rootfs that the runtime will setup.
| Path | Type | Flags | Data |
|---|---|---|---|
| /proc | proc | MS_NOEXEC,MS_NOSUID,MS_NODEV | |
| /dev | tmpfs | MS_NOEXEC,MS_STRICTATIME | mode=755 |
| /dev/shm | tmpfs | MS_NOEXEC,MS_NOSUID,MS_NODEV | mode=1777,size=65536k |
| /dev/mqueue | mqueue | MS_NOEXEC,MS_NOSUID,MS_NODEV | |
| /dev/pts | devpts | MS_NOEXEC,MS_NOSUID | newinstance,ptmxmode=0666,mode=620,gid=5 |
| /sys | sysfs | MS_NOEXEC,MS_NOSUID,MS_NODEV,MS_RDONLY |
After a container's filesystems are mounted within the newly created
mount namespace /dev will need to be populated with a set of device nodes.
It is expected that a rootfs does not need to have any device nodes specified
for /dev within the rootfs as the container will setup the correct devices
that are required for executing a container's process.
| Path | Mode | Access |
|---|---|---|
| /dev/null | 0666 | rwm |
| /dev/zero | 0666 | rwm |
| /dev/full | 0666 | rwm |
| /dev/tty | 0666 | rwm |
| /dev/random | 0666 | rwm |
| /dev/urandom | 0666 | rwm |
| /dev/fuse | 0666 | rwm |
ptmx
/dev/ptmx will need to be a symlink to the host's /dev/ptmx within
the container.
The use of a pseudo TTY is optional within a container and it should support both.
If a pseudo is provided to the container /dev/console will need to be
setup by binding the console in /dev/ after it has been populated and mounted
in tmpfs.
| Source | Destination | UID GID | Mode | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| pty host path | /dev/console | 0 0 | 0600 | bind |
After /dev/null has been setup we check for any external links between
the container's io, STDIN, STDOUT, STDERR. If the container's io is pointing
to /dev/null outside the container we close and dup2 the the /dev/null
that is local to the container's rootfs.
After the container has /proc mounted a few standard symlinks are setup
within /dev/ for the io.
| Source | Destination |
|---|---|
| /proc/self/fd | /dev/fd |
| /proc/self/fd/0 | /dev/stdin |
| /proc/self/fd/1 | /dev/stdout |
| /proc/self/fd/2 | /dev/stderr |
A pivot_root is used to change the root for the process, effectively
jailing the process inside the rootfs.
put_old = mkdir(...);
pivot_root(rootfs, put_old);
chdir("/");
unmount(put_old, MS_DETACH);
rmdir(put_old);
For container's running with a rootfs inside ramfs a MS_MOVE combined
with a chroot is required as pivot_root is not supported in ramfs.
mount(rootfs, "/", NULL, MS_MOVE, NULL);
chroot(".");
chdir("/");
The umask is set back to 0022 after the filesystem setup has been completed.
Resources
Cgroups are used to handle resource allocation for containers. This includes system resources like cpu, memory, and device access.
| Subsystem | Enabled |
|---|---|
| devices | 1 |
| memory | 1 |
| cpu | 1 |
| cpuacct | 1 |
| cpuset | 1 |
| blkio | 1 |
| perf_event | 1 |
| freezer | 1 |
| hugetlb | 1 |
| pids | 1 |
All cgroup subsystem are joined so that statistics can be collected from each of the subsystems. Freezer does not expose any stats but is joined so that containers can be paused and resumed.
The parent process of the container's init must place the init pid inside the correct cgroups before the initialization begins. This is done so that no processes or threads escape the cgroups. This sync is done via a pipe ( specified in the runtime section below ) that the container's init process will block waiting for the parent to finish setup.
Security
The standard set of Linux capabilities that are set in a container provide a good default for security and flexibility for the applications.
| Capability | Enabled |
|---|---|
| CAP_NET_RAW | 1 |
| CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE | 1 |
| CAP_AUDIT_READ | 1 |
| CAP_AUDIT_WRITE | 1 |
| CAP_DAC_OVERRIDE | 1 |
| CAP_SETFCAP | 1 |
| CAP_SETPCAP | 1 |
| CAP_SETGID | 1 |
| CAP_SETUID | 1 |
| CAP_MKNOD | 1 |
| CAP_CHOWN | 1 |
| CAP_FOWNER | 1 |
| CAP_FSETID | 1 |
| CAP_KILL | 1 |
| CAP_SYS_CHROOT | 1 |
| CAP_NET_BROADCAST | 0 |
| CAP_SYS_MODULE | 0 |
| CAP_SYS_RAWIO | 0 |
| CAP_SYS_PACCT | 0 |
| CAP_SYS_ADMIN | 0 |
| CAP_SYS_NICE | 0 |
| CAP_SYS_RESOURCE | 0 |
| CAP_SYS_TIME | 0 |
| CAP_SYS_TTY_CONFIG | 0 |
| CAP_AUDIT_CONTROL | 0 |
| CAP_MAC_OVERRIDE | 0 |
| CAP_MAC_ADMIN | 0 |
| CAP_NET_ADMIN | 0 |
| CAP_SYSLOG | 0 |
| CAP_DAC_READ_SEARCH | 0 |
| CAP_LINUX_IMMUTABLE | 0 |
| CAP_IPC_LOCK | 0 |
| CAP_IPC_OWNER | 0 |
| CAP_SYS_PTRACE | 0 |
| CAP_SYS_BOOT | 0 |
| CAP_LEASE | 0 |
| CAP_WAKE_ALARM | 0 |
| CAP_BLOCK_SUSPEND | 0 |
Additional security layers like apparmor and selinux can be used with the containers. A container should support setting an apparmor profile or selinux process and mount labels if provided in the configuration.
Standard apparmor profile:
#include <tunables/global>
profile <profile_name> flags=(attach_disconnected,mediate_deleted) {
#include <abstractions/base>
network,
capability,
file,
umount,
deny @{PROC}/sys/fs/** wklx,
deny @{PROC}/sysrq-trigger rwklx,
deny @{PROC}/mem rwklx,
deny @{PROC}/kmem rwklx,
deny @{PROC}/sys/kernel/[^s][^h][^m]* wklx,
deny @{PROC}/sys/kernel/*/** wklx,
deny mount,
deny /sys/[^f]*/** wklx,
deny /sys/f[^s]*/** wklx,
deny /sys/fs/[^c]*/** wklx,
deny /sys/fs/c[^g]*/** wklx,
deny /sys/fs/cg[^r]*/** wklx,
deny /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/** rwklx,
deny /sys/kernel/security/** rwklx,
}
TODO: seccomp work is being done to find a good default config
Runtime and Init Process
During container creation the parent process needs to talk to the container's init
process and have a form of synchronization. This is accomplished by creating
a pipe that is passed to the container's init. When the init process first spawns
it will block on its side of the pipe until the parent closes its side. This
allows the parent to have time to set the new process inside a cgroup hierarchy
and/or write any uid/gid mappings required for user namespaces.
The pipe is passed to the init process via FD 3.
The application consuming libcontainer should be compiled statically. libcontainer
does not define any init process and the arguments provided are used to exec the
process inside the application. There should be no long running init within the
container spec.
If a pseudo tty is provided to a container it will open and dup2 the console
as the container's STDIN, STDOUT, STDERR as well as mounting the console
as /dev/console.
An extra set of mounts are provided to a container and setup for use. A container's rootfs can contain some non portable files inside that can cause side effects during execution of a process. These files are usually created and populated with the container specific information via the runtime.
Extra runtime files:
- /etc/hosts
- /etc/resolv.conf
- /etc/hostname
- /etc/localtime
Defaults
There are a few defaults that can be overridden by users, but in their omission these apply to processes within a container.
| Type | Value |
|---|---|
| Parent Death Signal | SIGKILL |
| UID | 0 |
| GID | 0 |
| GROUPS | 0, NULL |
| CWD | "/" |
| $HOME | Current user's home dir or "/" |
| Readonly rootfs | false |
| Pseudo TTY | false |
Actions
After a container is created there is a standard set of actions that can be done to the container. These actions are part of the public API for a container.
| Action | Description |
|---|---|
| Get processes | Return all the pids for processes running inside a container |
| Get Stats | Return resource statistics for the container as a whole |
| Wait | Wait waits on the container's init process ( pid 1 ) |
| Wait Process | Wait on any of the container's processes returning the exit status |
| Destroy | Kill the container's init process and remove any filesystem state |
| Signal | Send a signal to the container's init process |
| Signal Process | Send a signal to any of the container's processes |
| Pause | Pause all processes inside the container |
| Resume | Resume all processes inside the container if paused |
| Exec | Execute a new process inside of the container ( requires setns ) |
| Set | Setup configs of the container after it's created |
Execute a new process inside of a running container.
User can execute a new process inside of a running container. Any binaries to be executed must be accessible within the container's rootfs.
The started process will run inside the container's rootfs. Any changes made by the process to the container's filesystem will persist after the process finished executing.
The started process will join all the container's existing namespaces. When the container is paused, the process will also be paused and will resume when the container is unpaused. The started process will only run when the container's primary process (PID 1) is running, and will not be restarted when the container is restarted.
Planned additions
The started process will have its own cgroups nested inside the container's cgroups. This is used for process tracking and optionally resource allocation handling for the new process. Freezer cgroup is required, the rest of the cgroups are optional. The process executor must place its pid inside the correct cgroups before starting the process. This is done so that no child processes or threads can escape the cgroups.
When the process is stopped, the process executor will try (in a best-effort way) to stop all its children and remove the sub-cgroups.