[LSF/MM/BPF TOPIC] Refactor LSM hooks for VFS mount operations

[Casey Schaufler]

On 1/22/2026 3:01 PM, Song Liu wrote:
> Hi Casey,
>
> Thanks for your comments!
>
> On Thu, Jan 22, 2026 at 9:16 AM Casey Schaufler <casey at schaufler-ca.com> wrote:
>> On 1/21/2026 7:00 PM, Song Liu wrote:
>>> Hi Paul,
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jan 21, 2026 at 4:14 PM Paul Moore <paul at paul-moore.com> wrote:
>>>> On Wed, Jan 21, 2026 at 4:18 PM Song Liu <song at kernel.org> wrote:
>>>>> Current LSM hooks do not have good coverage for VFS mount operations.
>>>>> Specifically, there are the following issues (and maybe more..):
>>>> I don't recall LSM folks normally being invited to LSFMMBPF so it
>>>> seems like this would be a poor forum to discuss LSM hooks.
>>> Agreed this might not be the best forum to discuss LSM hooks.
>>> However, I am not aware of a better forum for in person discussions.
>>>
>>> AFAICT, in-tree LSMs have straightforward logics around mount
>>> monitoring. As long as we get these logic translated properly, I
>>> don't expect much controversy with in-tree LSMs.
>> The existing mount hooks can't handle multiple LSMs that provide
>> mount options. Fixing this has proven non-trivial.
> Could you please share more information about this issue?

LSMs assume that any mount options passed to them are options
they provide. If an option isn't recognized, it's an error. If
two LSMs provide mount options the first will report an error for
a mount option recognized by the second. Since hook processing
uses a "bail on fail" model, the second LSM will never be called
to process its options and the mount operation will fail.

The option processing needs to change to allow option processing
in an LSM to differentiate between a failure in processing its
options from finding an unrecognized option. The infrastructure
needs to be changed to allow for multiple LSMs to look at the
options and only fail if none of them handle the options.

>
>> Changes to LSM
>> hooks have to be discussed on the LSM email list, regardless of how
>> little impact it seems they might have.
> I don't think we're gonna ship anything without thorough discussions in
> the mailing list.
>
> Thanks,
> Song