[alsa-devel] [RFC PATCH] ALSA: core: Add DMA share buffer support

[Jaroslav Kysela]

Dne 23.1.2019 v 13:46 Leo Yan napsal(a):
> Hi all,
> 
> On Wed, Jan 23, 2019 at 12:58:51PM +0100, Takashi Iwai wrote:
>> On Tue, 22 Jan 2019 21:25:35 +0100,
>> Mark Brown wrote:
>>>
>>> On Mon, Jan 21, 2019 at 03:15:43PM +0100, Jaroslav Kysela wrote:
>>>> Dne 21.1.2019 v 13:40 Mark Brown napsal(a):
>>>
>>>>> It was the bit about adding more extended permission control that I was
>>>>> worried about there, not the initial O_APPEND bit.  Indeed the O_APPEND
>>>>> bit sounds like it might also work from the base buffer sharing point of
>>>>> view, I have to confess I'd not heard of that feature before (it didn't
>>>>> come up in the discussion when Eric raised this in Prague).
>>>
>>>> With permissions, I meant to make possible to restrict the file
>>>> descriptor operations (ioctls) for the depending task (like access to
>>>> the DMA buffer, synchronize it for the non-coherent platforms and maybe
>>>> read/write the actual position, delay etc.). It should be relatively
>>>> easy to implement using the snd_pcm_file structure.
>>>
>>> Right, that's what I understood you to mean.  If you want to have a
>>> policy saying "it's OK to export a PCM file descriptor if it's only got
>>> permissions X and Y" the security module is going to need to know about
>>> the mechanism for setting those permissions.  With dma_buf that's all a
>>> bit easier as there's less new stuff, though I've no real idea how much
>>> of a big deal that actually is.
>>
>> There are many ways to implement such a thing, yeah.  If we'd need an
>> implementation that is done solely in the sound driver layer, I can
>> imagine to introduce either a new ioctl or an open flag (like O_EXCL)
>> to specify the restricted sharing.  That is, a kind of master / slave
>> model where only the master is allowed to manipulate the stream while
>> the slave can mmap, read/write and get status.
>
> In order to support EXCLUSIVE mode, it is necessary to convert the
> /dev/snd/ descriptor to an anon_inode:dmabuffer file descriptor.
> SELinux allows that file descriptor to be passed to the client. It can
> also be used by the AAudioService.

Okay, so this is probably the only point which we should resolve for the
already available DMA buffer sharing in ALSA (the O_APPEND flag).

I had another glance to your dma-buf implementation and I see many
things which might cause problems:

- allow to call dma-buf ioctls only when the audio device is in specific
state (stream is not running)

- as Takashi mentioned, if we return another file-descriptor (dma-buf
export) to the user space and the server closes the main pcm
file-descriptor (the client does not) - the result will be a crash (dma
buffer will be freed, but referenced through the dma-buf interface)

- the attach function calls dma_buf_get(fd), but what if fd points to
another dma-buf allocation from a different driver? the unexpected
private data will cause crash - there should be a type checking in the
dma-buf interface

If I look to the dma_buf_fd() implementation:

  fd = get_unused_fd_flags(flags);
  fd_install(fd, dmabuf->file);

.. what if we just add one new ioctl to the ALSA's PCM API which will
return a new anonymous inode descriptor with the restricted access to
the main PCM device to satisfy the SELinux requirements / security
policies? It might be more nice and simple solution than to implement
the full dma-buf interface for the ALSA's PCM devices.

Question: The dma-buf also implements the fencing, but I am not able to
determine, if this mechanism is used in android [1]. It may allow
concurrent mmap and synchronize apps - but the sound server should
manage the access to the DMA buffer anyway. In my opinion, it makes much
sense for the video-pipes when the hardware does some accelerations
(encoding/decoding).

					Jaroslav

> [1] https://source.android.com/devices/audio/aaudio

-- 
Jaroslav Kysela <perex at perex.cz>
Linux Sound Maintainer; ALSA Project; Red Hat, Inc.