BPF_PROG_TYPE_CGROUP_SOCKOPT

BPF_PROG_TYPE_CGROUP_SOCKOPT program type can be attached to two cgroup hooks:

  • BPF_CGROUP_GETSOCKOPT - called every time process executes getsockopt system call.

  • BPF_CGROUP_SETSOCKOPT - called every time process executes setsockopt system call.

The context (struct bpf_sockopt) has associated socket (sk) and all input arguments: level, optname, optval and optlen.

BPF_CGROUP_SETSOCKOPT

BPF_CGROUP_SETSOCKOPT is triggered before the kernel handling of sockopt and it has writable context: it can modify the supplied arguments before passing them down to the kernel. This hook has access to the cgroup and socket local storage.

If BPF program sets optlen to -1, the control will be returned back to the userspace after all other BPF programs in the cgroup chain finish (i.e. kernel setsockopt handling will not be executed).

Note, that optlen can not be increased beyond the user-supplied value. It can only be decreased or set to -1. Any other value will trigger EFAULT.

Return Type

  • 0 - reject the syscall, EPERM will be returned to the userspace.

  • 1 - success, continue with next BPF program in the cgroup chain.

BPF_CGROUP_GETSOCKOPT

BPF_CGROUP_GETSOCKOPT is triggered after the kernel handing of sockopt. The BPF hook can observe optval, optlen and retval if it’s interested in whatever kernel has returned. BPF hook can override the values above, adjust optlen and reset retval to 0. If optlen has been increased above initial getsockopt value (i.e. userspace buffer is too small), EFAULT is returned.

This hook has access to the cgroup and socket local storage.

Note, that the only acceptable value to set to retval is 0 and the original value that the kernel returned. Any other value will trigger EFAULT.

Return Type

  • 0 - reject the syscall, EPERM will be returned to the userspace.

  • 1 - success: copy optval and optlen to userspace, return retval from the syscall (note that this can be overwritten by the BPF program from the parent cgroup).

Cgroup Inheritance

Suppose, there is the following cgroup hierarchy where each cgroup has BPF_CGROUP_GETSOCKOPT attached at each level with BPF_F_ALLOW_MULTI flag:

A (root, parent)
 \
  B (child)

When the application calls getsockopt syscall from the cgroup B, the programs are executed from the bottom up: B, A. First program (B) sees the result of kernel’s getsockopt. It can optionally adjust optval, optlen and reset retval to 0. After that control will be passed to the second (A) program which will see the same context as B including any potential modifications.

Same for BPF_CGROUP_SETSOCKOPT: if the program is attached to A and B, the trigger order is B, then A. If B does any changes to the input arguments (level, optname, optval, optlen), then the next program in the chain (A) will see those changes, not the original input setsockopt arguments. The potentially modified values will be then passed down to the kernel.

Large optval

When the optval is greater than the PAGE_SIZE, the BPF program can access only the first PAGE_SIZE of that data. So it has to options:

  • Set optlen to zero, which indicates that the kernel should use the original buffer from the userspace. Any modifications done by the BPF program to the optval are ignored.

  • Set optlen to the value less than PAGE_SIZE, which indicates that the kernel should use BPF’s trimmed optval.

When the BPF program returns with the optlen greater than PAGE_SIZE, the userspace will receive EFAULT errno.

Example

See tools/testing/selftests/bpf/progs/sockopt_sk.c for an example of BPF program that handles socket options.