[PATCH v10 7/7] docs: proc: add documentation about mount restrictions
Alexey Gladkov <[email protected]> Mon, 27 Apr 2026 10:26:08 +0200
| Newsgroups | dev.linux.lists.containers,org.kernel.vger.linux-fsdevel,org.kernel.vger.linux-kernel |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <e7cb804df3c1759ee17cf9df1dc4c211d63d7a5f.1777278334.git.legion@kernel.org> |
procfs has a number of mounting restrictions that are not documented anywhere. Signed-off-by: Alexey Gladkov <[email protected]> --- Documentation/filesystems/proc.rst | 19 ++++++++++++++++++- 1 file changed, 18 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/proc.rst b/Documentation/filesystems/proc.rst index b0c0d1b45b99..b836b725b35d 100644 --- a/Documentation/filesystems/proc.rst +++ b/Documentation/filesystems/proc.rst @@ -52,6 +52,7 @@ fixes/update part 1.1 Stefani Seibold <[email protected]> June 9 2009 4 Configuring procfs 4.1 Mount options + 4.2 Mount restrictions 5 Filesystem behavior @@ -2401,7 +2402,9 @@ prohibited by hidepid=. If you use some daemon like identd which needs to learn information about processes information, just add identd to this group. subset=pid hides all top level files and directories in the procfs that -are not related to tasks. +are not related to tasks. This option cannot be changed on an existing +procfs instance because overmounts that existed before the change could +otherwise remain reachable after the top level procfs entries are hidden. pidns= specifies a pid namespace (either as a string path to something like `/proc/$pid/ns/pid`, or a file descriptor when using `FSCONFIG_SET_FD`) that @@ -2410,6 +2413,20 @@ will use the calling process's active pid namespace. Note that the pid namespace of an existing procfs instance cannot be modified (attempting to do so will give an `-EBUSY` error). +4.2 Mount restrictions +-------------------------- + +If user namespaces are in use, the kernel additionally checks the instances of +procfs available to the mounter and will not allow procfs to be mounted if: + + 1. This mount is not fully visible unless the new procfs is going to be + mounted with subset=pid option. + + a. Its root directory is not the root directory of the filesystem. + b. If any file or non-empty procfs directory is hidden by another mount. + + 2. A new mount overrides the readonly option or any option from atime family. + Chapter 5: Filesystem behavior ============================== -- 2.54.0