[PATCH] exec: allow executing block devices

[Alyssa Ross]

As far as I can tell, the S_ISREG() check is there to prevent
executing files where that would be nonsensical, like directories,
fifos, or sockets.  But the semantics for executing a block device are
quite obvious — the block device acts just like a regular file.

My use case is having a common VM image that takes a configurable
payload to run.  The payload will always be a single ELF file.

I could share the file with virtio-fs, or I could create a disk image
containing a filesystem containing the payload, but both of those add
unnecessary layers of indirection when all I need to do is share a
single executable blob with the VM.  Sharing it as a block device is
the most natural thing to do, aside from the (arbitrary, as far as I
can tell) restriction on executing block devices.  (The only slight
complexity is that I need to ensure that my payload size is rounded up
to a whole number of sectors, but that's trivial and fast in
comparison to e.g. generating a filesystem image.)

Signed-off-by: Alyssa Ross <hi@xxxxxxxxx>
---
 fs/exec.c  | 6 ++++--
 fs/namei.c | 2 +-
 2 files changed, 5 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/fs/exec.c b/fs/exec.c
index 6518e33ea813..e29a9f16da5f 100644
--- a/fs/exec.c
+++ b/fs/exec.c
@@ -148,7 +148,8 @@ SYSCALL_DEFINE1(uselib, const char __user *, library)
 	 * and check again at the very end too.
 	 */
 	error = -EACCES;
-	if (WARN_ON_ONCE(!S_ISREG(file_inode(file)->i_mode) ||
+	if (WARN_ON_ONCE((!S_ISREG(file_inode(file)->i_mode) &&
+			  !S_ISBLK(file_inode(file)->i_mode)) ||
 			 path_noexec(&file->f_path)))
 		goto exit;
 
@@ -931,7 +932,8 @@ static struct file *do_open_execat(int fd, struct filename *name, int flags)
 	 * and check again at the very end too.
 	 */
 	err = -EACCES;
-	if (WARN_ON_ONCE(!S_ISREG(file_inode(file)->i_mode) ||
+	if (WARN_ON_ONCE((!S_ISREG(file_inode(file)->i_mode) &&
+			  !S_ISBLK(file_inode(file)->i_mode)) ||
 			 path_noexec(&file->f_path)))
 		goto exit;
 
diff --git a/fs/namei.c b/fs/namei.c
index 567ee547492b..60c89321604a 100644
--- a/fs/namei.c
+++ b/fs/namei.c
@@ -3254,7 +3254,7 @@ static int may_open(struct mnt_idmap *idmap, const struct path *path,
 		fallthrough;
 	case S_IFIFO:
 	case S_IFSOCK:
-		if (acc_mode & MAY_EXEC)
+		if ((inode->i_mode & S_IFMT) != S_IFBLK && (acc_mode & MAY_EXEC))
 			return -EACCES;
 		flag &= ~O_TRUNC;
 		break;

base-commit: 94f6f0550c625fab1f373bb86a6669b45e9748b3
-- 
2.42.0