[PATCH 3/5] exec: Remove recursion from search_binary_handler

[Linus Torvalds]

On Tue, May 12, 2020 at 7:32 PM Rob Landley <rob at landley.net> wrote:
>
> On 5/12/20 7:20 PM, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > Ack. I think the AT_EXECFD thing is a sign that this isn't internal to
> > binfmt_misc, but it also shouldn't be gating this issue. In reality,
> > ELF is the only real binary format that matters - the script/misc
> > binfmts are just indirection entries - and it supports AT_EXECFD, so
> > let's just ignore the theoretical case of "maybe nobody exposes it".
>
> Would this potentially make the re-exec-yourself case easier to do at some
> point? (Which nommu needs to do, and /proc/self/exe isn't always available.)

AT_EXECFD may be an ELF thing, but normal ELF binaries don't do that
"we have a fd". So it only triggers for binfmt_misc (and only when the
flag is set for "I want the fd").

So no, this wouldn't help re-exec-yourself in general.

Although I guess we could add an ELF section note that does that whole
"executable fd" thing for other things too.

Everything is possible in theory..

               Linus