Fix #420: run services inside a PAM session

Apply a PAM session to run/task/sysv/services Finit starts, pam_limits
above all, so a service running as a given user picks up that user's
limits the way a login does.

Add a new `pam` setting for the new block format (only), like the
per-service directories, naming a file in /etc/pam.d:

    service weston {
        user    = "weston"
        pam     = "weston-autologin"
        command = "/usr/bin/weston --continue-without-input"
    }

pam_close_session() has to be called by a process still holding the
handle, and the handle does not survive exec().  Hence the keeper: it
holds the handle, drops to the service's credentials, and waits for a
parent-death signal before closing the session.  Same shape as
systemd's (sd-pam), for the same reason, and one per fork, so the
script hooks open and close their own.

The keeper closes the descriptors it inherited from Finit and only
those.  Closing everything would also take out what pam_open_session()
opened for itself, a keyring fd or a lock file, and leave the modules
to close a session with those pulled out from under them.  Closing
nothing, as (sd-pam) does, would leave it holding the write end of the
notify pipe for the service's whole lifetime and starve notify = "s6"
services of their ready signal.  So the fds open before pam_start()
are snapshotted and exactly those are closed, while the ones PAM opens
after are marked close-on-exec so the daemon does not inherit them
either.

A refused value, a denied account stack, an uninstalled pam.d file,
and a build without PAM support all keep the service from starting
rather than running it with the stacks skipped: one that quietly loses
pam_limits and its private /tmp, with nothing said.  Capabilities a
module like pam_cap.so granted are merged into the IAB Finit applies
instead of being replaced by it, which only helps a service that also
sets capabilities, the other arm being a plain setuid() with nothing
left to restore once permitted is empty.

The test sysroot gains pam_permit.so, pam_deny.so and pam_limits.so,
which ldd cannot see, libpam dlopen()s them, and the test skips when
the host has none to stage.  The negative cases pin the exit status
rather than only asserting crashed, which serv reports for any early
exit, so a bad command or an unwritable pidfile cannot pass for a
rejected session.

Signed-off-by: Joachim Wiberg <troglobit@gmail.com>
This commit is contained in:
Joachim Wiberg committed 2026-09-23 16:30:14 +02:00
1 parent bad7c5c99a
commit 61b0e0f3e6
21 files changed
+964 -6

No files matched your search

+14
View File
@@ -15,6 +15,11 @@ and `/dev/disk/by-label/` symlinks after. keventd is enabled by
default, so this is a hard requirement unless you build with
`--without-keventd`.
PAM session support for services is built by default. It needs
[Linux-PAM][] (-lpam); the build falls back to no PAM support when that
library is missing. A static build, `--enable-static`, disables PAM
too, since libpam loads its modules with `dlopen()`.
> [!IMPORTANT]
> Most free/open source software packages that use `configure` default
> to install to `/usr/local`. However, some Linux distributions do no
@@ -54,6 +59,14 @@ Below are a few of the main switches to configure:
built-ins (.o files) and all external libraries, except the C library
will be linked statically.
* `--disable-pam`: Opt out of Finit's built-in PAM session support,
enabled by default, which lets a service declare `pam = "name"` and
run inside a session set up from `/etc/pam.d/name`. Needs libpam,
falls back to disabled when it is missing, and is also disabled for
`--enable-static` builds. Asking for `--enable-pam` and
`--enable-static` together is an error rather than a fallback. See
[PAM Sessions](config/pam.md)
* `--enable-kernel-cmdline`: Enable Finit pre-4.1 parsing of init args from
`/proc/cmdline`, this is *not recommended* since Finit may be running as the
init for container apps that can see the host's `/proc` filesystem
@@ -285,3 +298,4 @@ it only for debugging start up issues when Finit crashes.
[libite]: https://github.com/troglobit/libite
[libConfuse]: https://github.com/libconfuse/libconfuse
[util-linux]: https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux
[Linux-PAM]: https://github.com/linux-pam/linux-pam