Re: git: c33509d49a6f - main - gssd: Fix handling of the gssname=<name> NFS mount option

From: Rick Macklem <rick.macklem_at_gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2023 03:01:17 UTC
On Sat, Jan 7, 2023 at 6:04 PM Benjamin Kaduk <bjkfbsd@gmail.com> wrote:
>
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> On Sat, Jan 7, 2023 at 1:50 PM Rick Macklem <rmacklem@freebsd.org> wrote:
>>
>> The branch main has been updated by rmacklem:
>>
>> URL: https://cgit.FreeBSD.org/src/commit/?id=c33509d49a6fdcf86ef280a78f428d3cb7012c4a
>>
>> commit c33509d49a6fdcf86ef280a78f428d3cb7012c4a
>> Author:     Rick Macklem <rmacklem@FreeBSD.org>
>> AuthorDate: 2023-01-07 21:49:25 +0000
>> Commit:     Rick Macklem <rmacklem@FreeBSD.org>
>> CommitDate: 2023-01-07 21:49:25 +0000
>>
>>     gssd: Fix handling of the gssname=<name> NFS mount option
>>
>>     If an NFS mount using "sec=krb5[ip],gssname=<name>" is
>>     done, the gssd daemon fails.  There is a long delay
>>     (several seconds) in the gss_acquire_cred() call and then
>>     it returns success, but the credentials returned are
>>     junk.
>>
>>     I have no idea how long this has been broken, due to some
>>     change in the Heimdal gssapi library call, but I suspect
>>     it has been quite some time.
>>
>>     Anyhow, it turns out that replacing the "desired_name"
>>     argument with GSS_C_NO_NAME fixes the problem.
>>     Replacing the argument should not be a problem, since the
>>     TGT for the host based initiator credential in the default
>>     keytab file should be the only TGT in the gssd'd credential
>>     cache (which is not the one for uid 0).
>>
>>     I will try and determine if FreeBSD13 and/or FreeBSD12
>>     needs this same fix and will MFC if they need the fix.
>>
>>     This problem only affected Kerberized NFS mounts when the
>>     "gssname" mount option was used.  Other Kerberized NFS
>>     mount cases already used GSS_C_NO_NAME and work ok.
>>     A workaround if you do not have this patch is to do a
>>     "kinit -k host/FQDN" as root on the machine, followed by
>>     the Kerberized NFS mount without the "gssname" mount
>>     option.
>>
>
>
> Hi Rick,
>
> This doesn't seem like a good long-term fix.
> If we're going to have a gssname argument, we should actually make
> it take effect, rather than silently ignoring it, which is what using GSS_C_NO_NAME
> does (it indicates the use of "any credential", which ends up meaning the
> default credential when used on a GSS initiator).
>
I have reverted this patch.  I found out that the long delay was caused by a
misconfigured DNS (I did not have "dns" in /etc/nsswitch.conf, but did have a
/etc/resolv.conf file and no route to the DNS server).

I have done another commit which increases the timeout for the kernel to gssd(8)
daemon upcall so that the mount does complete after about 30 seconds for this
case of a misconfigured DNS and the gssd(8) daemon no longer terminates
due to an upcall timeout.

Thanks go to Ben for indicating that this needed further investigation.

rick

> It should be possible to inspect the "junk" credential from gss_acquire_cred()
> and learn more about what happened (perhaps a non-kerberos mechanismm was
> picked, or the name was in the wrong format)  using various gss_inquire_*() calls,
> as a diagnostic measure.  Unfortunately I don't anticipate having a huge amount of time
> to put into it anytime soon...
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ben