selinux: refactor changing booleans

Refactor the logic for changing SELinux policy booleans in a similar
manner to the refactoring of policy load, thereby reducing the
size of the critical section when the policy write-lock is held
and making it easier to convert the policy rwlock to RCU in the
future.  Instead of directly modifying the policydb in place, modify
a copy and then swap it into place through a single pointer update.
Only fully copy the portions of the policydb that are affected by
boolean changes to avoid the full cost of a deep policydb copy.
Introduce another level of indirection for the sidtab since changing
booleans does not require updating the sidtab, unlike policy load.
While we are here, create a common helper for notifying
other kernel components and userspace of a policy change and call it
from both security_set_bools() and selinux_policy_commit().

Based on an old (2004) patch by Kaigai Kohei [1] to convert the policy
rwlock to RCU that was deferred at the time since it did not
significantly improve performance and introduced complexity. Peter
Enderborg later submitted a patch series to convert to RCU [2] that
would have made changing booleans a much more expensive operation
by requiring a full policydb_write();policydb_read(); sequence to
deep copy the entire policydb and also had concerns regarding
atomic allocations.

This change is now simplified by the earlier work to encapsulate
policy state in the selinux_policy struct and to refactor
policy load.  After this change, the last major obstacle to
converting the policy rwlock to RCU is likely the sidtab live
convert support.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/selinux/6e2f9128-e191-ebb3-0e87-74bfccb0767f@tycho.nsa.gov/
[2] https://lore.kernel.org/selinux/20180530141104.28569-1-peter.enderborg@sony.com/

Signed-off-by: Stephen Smalley <stephen.smalley.work@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Paul Moore <paul@paul-moore.com>

0 files changed, 0 insertions, 0 deletions