[PATCH V3 1/2] audit: stop an old auditd being starved out by a new auditd

[Richard Guy Briggs]

Nothing prevents a new auditd starting up and replacing a valid
audit_pid when an old auditd is still running, effectively starving out
the old auditd since audit_pid no longer points to the old valid auditd.

If no message to auditd has been attempted since auditd died unnaturally
or got killed, audit_pid will still indicate it is alive.  There isn't
an easy way to detect if an old auditd is still running on the existing
audit_pid other than attempting to send a message to see if it fails.
An -ECONNREFUSED almost certainly means it disappeared and can be
replaced.  Other errors are not so straightforward and may indicate
transient problems that will resolve themselves and the old auditd will
recover.  Yet others will likely need manual intervention for which a
new auditd will not solve the problem.

Send a new message type (AUDIT_REPLACE) to the old auditd containing a
u32 with the PID of the new auditd.  If the audit replace message
succeeds (or doesn't fail with certainty), fail to register the new
auditd and return an error (-EEXIST).

This is expected to make the patch preventing an old auditd orphaning a
new auditd redundant.

V3: Switch audit message type from 1000 to 1300 block.

Signed-off-by: Richard Guy Briggs <rgb@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
 include/uapi/linux/audit.h |    1 +
 kernel/audit.c             |   16 +++++++++++++++-
 2 files changed, 16 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)

diff --git a/include/uapi/linux/audit.h b/include/uapi/linux/audit.h
index 843540c..d820aa9 100644
--- a/include/uapi/linux/audit.h
+++ b/include/uapi/linux/audit.h
@@ -110,6 +110,7 @@
 #define AUDIT_SECCOMP		1326	/* Secure Computing event */
 #define AUDIT_PROCTITLE		1327	/* Proctitle emit event */
 #define AUDIT_FEATURE_CHANGE	1328	/* audit log listing feature changes */
+#define AUDIT_REPLACE		1329	/* Replace auditd if this packet unanswerd */
 
 #define AUDIT_AVC		1400	/* SE Linux avc denial or grant */
 #define AUDIT_SELINUX_ERR	1401	/* Internal SE Linux Errors */
diff --git a/kernel/audit.c b/kernel/audit.c
index 36989a1..0368be2 100644
--- a/kernel/audit.c
+++ b/kernel/audit.c
@@ -809,6 +809,16 @@ static int audit_set_feature(struct sk_buff *skb)
 	return 0;
 }
 
+static int audit_replace(pid_t pid)
+{
+	struct sk_buff *skb = audit_make_reply(0, 0, AUDIT_REPLACE, 0, 0,
+					       &pid, sizeof(pid));
+
+	if (!skb)
+		return -ENOMEM;
+	return netlink_unicast(audit_sock, skb, audit_nlk_portid, 0);
+}
+
 static int audit_receive_msg(struct sk_buff *skb, struct nlmsghdr *nlh)
 {
 	u32			seq;
@@ -870,9 +880,13 @@ static int audit_receive_msg(struct sk_buff *skb, struct nlmsghdr *nlh)
 		}
 		if (s.mask & AUDIT_STATUS_PID) {
 			int new_pid = s.pid;
+			pid_t requesting_pid = task_tgid_vnr(current);
 
-			if ((!new_pid) && (task_tgid_vnr(current) != audit_pid))
+			if ((!new_pid) && (requesting_pid != audit_pid))
 				return -EACCES;
+			if (audit_pid && new_pid &&
+			    audit_replace(requesting_pid) != -ECONNREFUSED)
+				return -EEXIST;
 			if (audit_enabled != AUDIT_OFF)
 				audit_log_config_change("audit_pid", new_pid, audit_pid, 1);
 			audit_pid = new_pid;
-- 
1.7.1

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