Re: piping core dump to a program escapes container

From: Dongsheng Yang
Date: Tue Dec 08 2015 - 21:34:39 EST


On 10/25/2015 05:54 AM, Shayan Pooya wrote:
I noticed the following core_pattern behavior in my linux box while
running docker containers. I am not sure if it is bug, but it is
inconsistent and not documented.

If the core_pattern is set on the host, the containers will observe
and use the pattern for dumping cores (there is no per cgroup
core_pattern). According to core(5) for setting core_pattern one can:

1. echo "/tmp/cores/core.%e.%p" > /proc/sys/kernel/core_pattern
2. echo "|/bin/custom_core /tmp/cores/ %e %p " > /proc/sys/kernel/core_pattern

The former pattern evaluates the /tmp/cores path in the container's
filesystem namespace. Which means, the host does not see a core file
in /tmp/cores.

However, the latter evaluates the /bin/custom_core path in the global
filesystem namespace. Moreover, if /bin/core decides to write the core
to a path (/tmp/cores in this case as shown by the arg to
custom_core), the path will be evaluated in the global filesystem
namespace as well.

The latter behaviour is counter-intuitive and error-prone as the
container can fill up the core-file directory which it does not have
direct access to (which means the core is also not accessible for
debugging if someone only has access to the container).

Hi Shayan,
We found the same problem with what you described here.
Is there any document for this behaviour? I want to know is
that intentional or as you said a 'bug'. Maybe that's intentional
to provide a way for admin to collect core dumps from all containers as
Richard said. I am interested in it too.

Anyone can help here?

Yang

Currently, I work around this issue by detecting that the process is
crashing from a container (by comparing the namespace pid to the
global pid) and refuse to dump the core if it is from a container.

Tested on Ubuntu (kernel 3.16) and Fedora (kernel 4.1).
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