Re: [Xen-users] Vserver like security in Xen

["Henning Sprang" <henning_sprang@xxxxxx>]

On 1/31/07, James Miller <jimm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I have been using Xen and vserver for some time now.  One feature I would
> like to reproduce in Xen is Vservers ability to limit/reduce root's
> privileges using the Linux (POSIX) Capability system.
Basically, it's not Xen's Job do go that deep into the OSes privilege
system. I think, as of now, when you give somebody root access to your
domU, there are no means Xen can prevent root from doing random stuff.

And I don't think this will change. Xen is mainly a hypervisor, and
the Xen Kernel patches mainly there to talk nicely to the hypervisor
to get access to the processor, memory and devices, but not to go into
the privilege system.

You could use SELinux for things like that, but I am not sure about
the state of integration in Xen Linux Kernels, or if there are any
problems.
Fedora since Version 6 has some feature on using Xen Domain 0 on a
SELinux enabled machine - but I don't know about domU.

Or look at sHype, but that's at another level, far away from posix
capabilities. I can Imagine that sHype will some time, instead of only
preventing domU's with conflicting loads run on the same hypervisor,
they might one day also just check that these domU can run on the same
dom0, but not share memory segments, disks, or other devices.

Maybe it's an interesting question to ask what exactly do you want to
prevent from happening?

Henning

_______________________________________________
Xen-users mailing list
Xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users