Linux Containers have become a popular topic, making sure that a container image is not bigger than it should be is considered as a good practice. This article give some tips on how to create smaller Fedora container images.

microdnf

Fedora’s DNF is written in Python and and it’s designed to be extensible as it has wide range of plugins. But Fedora has an alternative base container image which uses an smaller package manager called microdnf written in C. To use this minimal image in a Dockerfile the FROM line should look like this:

FROM registry.fedoraproject.org/fedora-minimal:30

This is an important saving if your image does not need typical DNF dependencies like Python. For example, if you are making a NodeJS image.

Install and Clean up in one layer

To save space it’s important to remove repos meta data using dnf clean all or its microdnf equivalent microdnf clean all. But you should not do this in two steps because that would actually store those files in a container image layer then mark them for deletion in another layer. To do it properly you should do the installation and cleanup in one step like this

FROM registry.fedoraproject.org/fedora-minimal:30 
RUN microdnf install nodejs && microdnf clean all

Modularity with microdnf

Modularity is a way to offer you different versions of a stack to choose from. For example you might want non-LTS NodeJS version 11 for a project and old LTS NodeJS version 8 for another and latest LTS NodeJS version 10 for another. You can specify which stream using colon

# dnf module list  
# dnf module install nodejs:8

The dnf module install command implies two commands one that enables the stream and one that install nodejs from it.

# dnf module enable nodejs:8 
# dnf install nodejs

Although microdnf does not offer any command related to modularity, it is possible to enable a module with a configuation file, and libdnf (which microdnf uses) seems to support modularity streams. The file looks like this

/etc/dnf/modules.d/nodejs.module 
[nodejs] 
name=nodejs 
stream=8 
profiles= 
state=enabled

A full Dockerfile using modularity with microdnf looks like this:

FROM registry.fedoraproject.org/fedora-minimal:30 
RUN \
   echo -e "[nodejs]\nname=nodejs\nstream=8\nprofiles=\nstate=enabled\n" > /etc/dnf/modules.d/nodejs.module && \
   microdnf install nodejs zopfli findutils busybox && \
   microdnf clean all

Multi-staged builds

In many cases you might have tons of build-time dependencies that are not needed to run the software for example building a Go binary, which statically link dependencies. Multi-stage build are an efficient way to separate the application build and the application runtime.

For example the Dockerfile below builds confd a Go application.

# building container 
FROM registry.fedoraproject.org/fedora-minimal AS build 
RUN mkdir /go && microdnf install golang && microdnf clean all 
WORKDIR /go 
RUN export GOPATH=/go; CGO_ENABLED=0 go get github.com/kelseyhightower/confd 

FROM registry.fedoraproject.org/fedora-minimal 
WORKDIR / 
COPY --from=build /go/bin/confd /usr/local/bin 
CMD ["confd"] 

The multi-stage build is done by adding AS after the FROM instruction and by having another FROM from a base container image then using COPY –from= instruction to copy content from the build container to the second container.

This Dockerfile can then be built and run using podman

$ podman build -t myconfd .
$ podman run -it myconfd

Business documents often require special handling. Enter Electronic Document Interchange, or EDI. EDI is more than simply transferring files using email or http (or ftp), because these are documents like orders and invoices. When you send an invoice, you want to be sure that:

1. It goes to the right destination, and is not intercepted by competitors.
2. Your invoice cannot be forged by a 3rd party.
3. Your customer can’t claim in court that they never got the invoice.

The first two goals can be accomplished by HTTPS or email with S/MIME, and in some situations, a simple HTTPS POST to a web API is sufficient. What EDI adds is the last part.

This article does not cover the messy topic of formats for the files exchanged. Even when using a standardized format like ANSI or EDIFACT, it is ultimately up to the business partners. It is not uncommon for business partners to use an ad-hoc CSV file format. This article shows you how to configure Fedora to send and receive in an EDI setup.

Centralized EDI

The traditional solution is to use a Value Added Network, or VAN. The VAN is a central hub that transfers documents between their customers. Most importantly, it keeps a secure record of the documents exchanged that can be used as evidence in disputes. The VAN can use different transfer protocols for each of its customers

AS Protocols and MDN

The AS protocols are a specification for adding a digital signature with optional encryption to an electronic document. What it adds over HTTPS or S/MIME is the Message Disposition Notification, or MDN. The MDN is a signed and dated response that says, in essence, “We got your invoice.” It uses a secure hash to identify the specific document received. This addresses point #3 without involving a third party.

The AS2 protocol uses HTTP or HTTPS for transport. Other AS protocols target FTP and SMTP. AS2 is used by companies big and small to avoid depending on (and paying) a VAN.

OpenAS2

OpenAS2 is an open source Java implemention of the AS2 protocol. It is available in Fedora since 28, and installed with:

$ sudo dnf install openas2
$ cd /etc/openas2

Configuration is done with a text editor, and the config files are in XML. The first order of business before starting OpenAS2 is to change the factory passwords.

Edit /etc/openas2/config.xml and search for ChangeMe. Change those passwords. The default password on the certificate store is testas2, but that doesn’t matter much as anyone who can read the certificate store can read config.xml and get the password.

What to share with AS2 partners

There are 3 things you will exchange with an AS2 peer.

AS2 ID

Don’t bother looking up the official AS2 standard for legal AS2 IDs. While OpenAS2 implements the standard, your partners will likely be using a proprietary product which doesn’t. While AS2 allows much longer IDs, many implementations break with more than 16 characters. Using otherwise legal AS2 ID chars like ‘:’ that can appear as path separators on a proprietary OS is also a problem. Restrict your AS2 ID to upper and lower case alpha, digits, and ‘_’ with no more than 16 characters.

SSL certificate

For real use, you will want to generate a certificate with SHA256 and RSA. OpenAS2 ships with two factory certs to play with. Don’t use these for anything real, obviously. The certificate file is in PKCS12 format. Java ships with keytool which can maintain your PKCS12 “keystore,” as Java calls it. This article skips using openssl to generate keys and certificates. Simply note that sudo keytool -list -keystore as2_certs.p12 will list the two factory practice certs.

AS2 URL

This is an HTTP URL that will access your OpenAS2 instance. HTTPS is also supported, but is redundant. To use it you have to uncomment the https module configuration in config.xml, and supply a certificate signed by a public CA. This requires another article and is entirely unnecessary here.

By default, OpenAS2 listens on 10080 for HTTP and 10443 for HTTPS. OpenAS2 can talk to itself, so it ships with two partnerships using http://localhost:10080 as the AS2 URL. If you don’t find this a convincing demo, and can install a second instance (on a VM, for instance), you can use private IPs for the AS2 URLs. Or install Cjdns to get IPv6 mesh addresses that can be used anywhere, resulting in AS2 URLs like http://[fcbf:fc54:e597:7354:8250:2b2e:95e6:d6ba]:10080.

Most businesses will also want a list of IPs to add to their firewall. This is actually bad practice. An AS2 server has the same security risk as a web server, meaning you should isolate it in a VM or container. Also, the difficulty of keeping mutual lists of IPs up to date grows with the list of partners. The AS2 server rejects requests not signed by a configured partner.

OpenAS2 Partners

With that in mind, open partnerships.xml in your editor. At the top is a list of “partners.” Each partner has a name (referenced by the partnerships below as “sender” or “receiver”), AS2 ID, certificate, and email. You need a partner definition for yourself and those you exchange documents with. You can define multiple partners for yourself. OpenAS2 ships with two partners, OpenAS2A and OpenAS2B, which you’ll use to send a test document.

OpenAS2 Partnerships

Next is a list of “partnerships,” one for each direction. Each partnership configuration includes the sender, receiver, and the AS2 URL used to send the documents. By default, partnerships use synchronous MDN. The MDN is returned on the same HTTP transaction. You could uncomment the as2_receipt_option for asynchronous MDN, which is sent some time later. Use synchronous MDN whenever possible, as tracking pending MDNs adds complexity to your application.

The other partnership options select encryption, signature hash, and other protocol options. A fully implemented AS2 receiver can handle any combination of options, but AS2 partners may have incomplete implementations or policy requirements. For example, DES3 is a comparatively weak encryption algorithm, and may not be acceptable. It is the default because it is almost universally implemented.

If you went to the trouble to set up a second physical or virtual machine for this test, designate one as OpenAS2A and the other as OpenAS2B. Modify the as2_url on the OpenAS2A-to-OpenAS2B partnership to use the IP (or hostname) of OpenAS2B, and vice versa for the OpenAS2B-to-OpenAS2A partnership. Unless they are using the FedoraWorkstation firewall profile, on both machines you’ll need:

# sudo firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-port=10080/tcp

Now start the openas2 service (on both machines if needed):

# sudo systemctl start openas2

Resetting the MDN password

This initializes the MDN log database with the factory password, not the one you changed it to. This is a packaging bug to be fixed in the next release. To avoid frustration, here’s how to change the h2 database password:

$ sudo systemctl stop openas2
$ cat >h2passwd <<'DONE'
#!/bin/bash
AS2DIR="/var/lib/openas2"
java -cp "$AS2DIR"/lib/h2* org.h2.tools.Shell \
     -url jdbc:h2:"$AS2DIR"/db/openas2     \
     -user sa -password "$1" <<EOF
alter user sa set password '$2';
exit
EOF
DONE
$ sudo sh h2passwd ChangeMe yournewpasswordsetabove
$ sudo systemctl start openas2

Testing the setup

With that out of the way, let’s send a document. Assuming you are on OpenAS2A machine:

$ cat >testdoc <<'DONE'
This is not a real EDI format, but is nevertheless a document.
DONE
$ sudo chown openas2 testdoc
$ sudo mv testdoc /var/spool/openas2/toOpenAS2B
$ sudo journalctl -f -u openas2
... log output of sending file, Control-C to stop following log
^C

OpenAS2 does not send a document until it is writable by the openas2 user or group. As a consequence, your actual business application will copy, or generate in place, the document. Then it changes the group or permissions to send it on its way, to avoid sending a partial document.

Now, on the OpenAS2B machine, /var/spool/openas2/OpenAS2A_OID-OpenAS2B_OID/inbox shows the message received. That should get you started!

Photo by Beatriz Pérez Moya on Unsplash.

The kernel team is working on final integration for kernel 5.1. This version was just recently released, and will arrive soon in Fedora. This version has many security fixes included. As a result, the Fedora kernel and QA teams have organized a test week from Monday, May 13, 2019 through Saturday, May 18, 2019. Refer to the wiki page for links to the test images you’ll need to participate. Read below for details.

How does a test week work?

A test day/week is an event where anyone can help make sure changes in Fedora work well in an upcoming release. Fedora community members often participate, and the public is welcome at these events. If you’ve never contributed before, this is a perfect way to get started.

To contribute, you only need to be able to do the following things:

• Download test materials, which include some large files
• Read and follow directions step by step

The wiki page for the kernel test day has a lot of good information on what and how to test. After you’ve done some testing, you can log your results in the test day web application. If you’re available on or around the day of the event, please do some testing and report your results.

Happy testing, and we hope to see you on test day.

This article includes some example commands to show you how to get a rough estimate of hard drive and RAID array performance using the dd command. Accurate measurements would have to take into account things like write amplification and system call overhead, which this guide does not. For a tool that might give more accurate results, you might want to consider using hdparm.

To factor out performance issues related to the file system, these examples show how to test the performance of your drives and arrays at the block level by reading and writing directly to/from their block devices. WARNING: The write tests will destroy any data on the block devices against which they are run. Do not run them against any device that contains data you want to keep!

Four tests

Below are four example dd commands that can be used to test the performance of a block device:

1. One process reading from $MY_DISK:

   # dd if=$MY_DISK of=/dev/null bs=1MiB count=200 iflag=nocache

2. One process writing to $MY_DISK:

   # dd if=/dev/zero of=$MY_DISK bs=1MiB count=200 oflag=direct

3. Two processes reading concurrently from $MY_DISK:

   # (dd if=$MY_DISK of=/dev/null bs=1MiB count=200 iflag=nocache &); (dd if=$MY_DISK of=/dev/null bs=1MiB count=200 iflag=nocache skip=200 &)

4. Two processes writing concurrently to $MY_DISK:

   # (dd if=/dev/zero of=$MY_DISK bs=1MiB count=200 oflag=direct &); (dd if=/dev/zero of=$MY_DISK bs=1MiB count=200 oflag=direct skip=200 &)

– The iflag=nocache and oflag=direct parameters are important when performing the read and write tests (respectively) because without them the dd command will sometimes show the resulting speed of transferring the data to/from RAM rather than the hard drive.

– The values for the bs and count parameters are somewhat arbitrary and what I have chosen should be large enough to provide a decent average in most cases for current hardware.

– The null and zero devices are used for the destination and source (respectively) in the read and write tests because they are fast enough that they will not be the limiting factor in the performance tests.

– The skip=200 parameter on the second dd command in the concurrent read and write tests is to ensure that the two copies of dd are operating on different areas of the hard drive.

16 examples

Below are demonstrations showing the results of running each of the above four tests against each of the following four block devices:

1. MY_DISK=/dev/sda2 (used in examples 1-X)
2. MY_DISK=/dev/sdb2 (used in examples 2-X)
3. MY_DISK=/dev/md/stripped (used in examples 3-X)
4. MY_DISK=/dev/md/mirrored (used in examples 4-X)

A video demonstration of the these tests being run on a PC is provided at the end of this guide.

Begin by putting your computer into rescue mode to reduce the chances that disk I/O from background services might randomly affect your test results. WARNING: This will shutdown all non-essential programs and services. Be sure to save your work before running these commands. You will need to know your root password to get into rescue mode. The passwd command, when run as the root user, will prompt you to (re)set your root account password.

$ sudo -i
# passwd
# setenforce 0
# systemctl rescue

You might also want to temporarily disable logging to disk:

# sed -r -i.bak 's/^#?Storage=.*/Storage=none/' /etc/systemd/journald.conf
# systemctl restart systemd-journald.service

If you have a swap device, it can be temporarily disabled and used to perform the following tests:

# swapoff -a
# MY_DEVS=$(mdadm --detail /dev/md/swap | grep active | grep -o "/dev/sd.*")
# mdadm --stop /dev/md/swap
# mdadm --zero-superblock $MY_DEVS

Example 1-1 (reading from sda)

# MY_DISK=$(echo $MY_DEVS | cut -d ' ' -f 1)
# dd if=$MY_DISK of=/dev/null bs=1MiB count=200 iflag=nocache

200+0 records in
200+0 records out
209715200 bytes (210 MB, 200 MiB) copied, 1.7003 s, 123 MB/s

Example 1-2 (writing to sda)

# MY_DISK=$(echo $MY_DEVS | cut -d ' ' -f 1)
# dd if=/dev/zero of=$MY_DISK bs=1MiB count=200 oflag=direct

200+0 records in
200+0 records out
209715200 bytes (210 MB, 200 MiB) copied, 1.67117 s, 125 MB/s

Example 1-3 (reading concurrently from sda)

# MY_DISK=$(echo $MY_DEVS | cut -d ' ' -f 1)
# (dd if=$MY_DISK of=/dev/null bs=1MiB count=200 iflag=nocache &); (dd if=$MY_DISK of=/dev/null bs=1MiB count=200 iflag=nocache skip=200 &)

200+0 records in
200+0 records out
209715200 bytes (210 MB, 200 MiB) copied, 3.42875 s, 61.2 MB/s
200+0 records in
200+0 records out
209715200 bytes (210 MB, 200 MiB) copied, 3.52614 s, 59.5 MB/s

Example 1-4 (writing concurrently to sda)

# MY_DISK=$(echo $MY_DEVS | cut -d ' ' -f 1)
# (dd if=/dev/zero of=$MY_DISK bs=1MiB count=200 oflag=direct &); (dd if=/dev/zero of=$MY_DISK bs=1MiB count=200 oflag=direct skip=200 &)

200+0 records out
209715200 bytes (210 MB, 200 MiB) copied, 3.2435 s, 64.7 MB/s
200+0 records in
200+0 records out
209715200 bytes (210 MB, 200 MiB) copied, 3.60872 s, 58.1 MB/s

Example 2-1 (reading from sdb)

# MY_DISK=$(echo $MY_DEVS | cut -d ' ' -f 2)
# dd if=$MY_DISK of=/dev/null bs=1MiB count=200 iflag=nocache

200+0 records in
200+0 records out
209715200 bytes (210 MB, 200 MiB) copied, 1.67285 s, 125 MB/s

Example 2-2 (writing to sdb)

# MY_DISK=$(echo $MY_DEVS | cut -d ' ' -f 2)
# dd if=/dev/zero of=$MY_DISK bs=1MiB count=200 oflag=direct

200+0 records in
200+0 records out
209715200 bytes (210 MB, 200 MiB) copied, 1.67198 s, 125 MB/s

Example 2-3 (reading concurrently from sdb)

# MY_DISK=$(echo $MY_DEVS | cut -d ' ' -f 2)
# (dd if=$MY_DISK of=/dev/null bs=1MiB count=200 iflag=nocache &); (dd if=$MY_DISK of=/dev/null bs=1MiB count=200 iflag=nocache skip=200 &)

200+0 records in
200+0 records out
209715200 bytes (210 MB, 200 MiB) copied, 3.52808 s, 59.4 MB/s
200+0 records in
200+0 records out
209715200 bytes (210 MB, 200 MiB) copied, 3.57736 s, 58.6 MB/s

Example 2-4 (writing concurrently to sdb)

# MY_DISK=$(echo $MY_DEVS | cut -d ' ' -f 2)
# (dd if=/dev/zero of=$MY_DISK bs=1MiB count=200 oflag=direct &); (dd if=/dev/zero of=$MY_DISK bs=1MiB count=200 oflag=direct skip=200 &)

200+0 records in
200+0 records out
209715200 bytes (210 MB, 200 MiB) copied, 3.7841 s, 55.4 MB/s
200+0 records in
200+0 records out
209715200 bytes (210 MB, 200 MiB) copied, 3.81475 s, 55.0 MB/s

Example 3-1 (reading from RAID0)

# mdadm --create /dev/md/stripped --homehost=any --metadata=1.0 --level=0 --raid-devices=2 $MY_DEVS
# MY_DISK=/dev/md/stripped
# dd if=$MY_DISK of=/dev/null bs=1MiB count=200 iflag=nocache

200+0 records in
200+0 records out
209715200 bytes (210 MB, 200 MiB) copied, 0.837419 s, 250 MB/s

Example 3-2 (writing to RAID0)

# MY_DISK=/dev/md/stripped
# dd if=/dev/zero of=$MY_DISK bs=1MiB count=200 oflag=direct

200+0 records in
200+0 records out
209715200 bytes (210 MB, 200 MiB) copied, 0.823648 s, 255 MB/s

Example 3-3 (reading concurrently from RAID0)

# MY_DISK=/dev/md/stripped
# (dd if=$MY_DISK of=/dev/null bs=1MiB count=200 iflag=nocache &); (dd if=$MY_DISK of=/dev/null bs=1MiB count=200 iflag=nocache skip=200 &)

200+0 records in
200+0 records out
209715200 bytes (210 MB, 200 MiB) copied, 1.31025 s, 160 MB/s
200+0 records in
200+0 records out
209715200 bytes (210 MB, 200 MiB) copied, 1.80016 s, 116 MB/s

Example 3-4 (writing concurrently to RAID0)

# MY_DISK=/dev/md/stripped
# (dd if=/dev/zero of=$MY_DISK bs=1MiB count=200 oflag=direct &); (dd if=/dev/zero of=$MY_DISK bs=1MiB count=200 oflag=direct skip=200 &)

200+0 records in
200+0 records out
209715200 bytes (210 MB, 200 MiB) copied, 1.65026 s, 127 MB/s
200+0 records in
200+0 records out
209715200 bytes (210 MB, 200 MiB) copied, 1.81323 s, 116 MB/s

Example 4-1 (reading from RAID1)

# mdadm --stop /dev/md/stripped
# mdadm --create /dev/md/mirrored --homehost=any --metadata=1.0 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 --assume-clean $MY_DEVS
# MY_DISK=/dev/md/mirrored
# dd if=$MY_DISK of=/dev/null bs=1MiB count=200 iflag=nocache

200+0 records in
200+0 records out
209715200 bytes (210 MB, 200 MiB) copied, 1.74963 s, 120 MB/s

Example 4-2 (writing to RAID1)

# MY_DISK=/dev/md/mirrored
# dd if=/dev/zero of=$MY_DISK bs=1MiB count=200 oflag=direct

200+0 records in
200+0 records out
209715200 bytes (210 MB, 200 MiB) copied, 1.74625 s, 120 MB/s

Example 4-3 (reading concurrently from RAID1)

# MY_DISK=/dev/md/mirrored
# (dd if=$MY_DISK of=/dev/null bs=1MiB count=200 iflag=nocache &); (dd if=$MY_DISK of=/dev/null bs=1MiB count=200 iflag=nocache skip=200 &)

200+0 records in
200+0 records out
209715200 bytes (210 MB, 200 MiB) copied, 1.67171 s, 125 MB/s
200+0 records in
200+0 records out
209715200 bytes (210 MB, 200 MiB) copied, 1.67685 s, 125 MB/s

Example 4-4 (writing concurrently to RAID1)

# MY_DISK=/dev/md/mirrored
# (dd if=/dev/zero of=$MY_DISK bs=1MiB count=200 oflag=direct &); (dd if=/dev/zero of=$MY_DISK bs=1MiB count=200 oflag=direct skip=200 &)

200+0 records in
200+0 records out
209715200 bytes (210 MB, 200 MiB) copied, 4.09666 s, 51.2 MB/s
200+0 records in
200+0 records out
209715200 bytes (210 MB, 200 MiB) copied, 4.1067 s, 51.1 MB/s

Restore your swap device and journald configuration

# mdadm --stop /dev/md/stripped /dev/md/mirrored
# mdadm --create /dev/md/swap --homehost=any --metadata=1.0 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 $MY_DEVS
# mkswap /dev/md/swap
# swapon -a
# mv /etc/systemd/journald.conf.bak /etc/systemd/journald.conf
# systemctl restart systemd-journald.service
# reboot

Interpreting the results

Examples 1-1, 1-2, 2-1, and 2-2 show that each of my drives read and write at about 125 MB/s.

Examples 1-3, 1-4, 2-3, and 2-4 show that when two reads or two writes are done in parallel on the same drive, each process gets at about half the drive’s bandwidth (60 MB/s).

The 3-x examples show the performance benefit of putting the two drives together in a RAID0 (data stripping) array. The numbers, in all cases, show that the RAID0 array performs about twice as fast as either drive is able to perform on its own. The trade-off is that you are twice as likely to lose everything because each drive only contains half the data. A three-drive array would perform three times as fast as a single drive (all drives being equal) but it would be thrice as likely to suffer a catastrophic failure.

The 4-x examples show that the performance of the RAID1 (data mirroring) array is similar to that of a single disk except for the case where multiple processes are concurrently reading (example 4-3). In the case of multiple processes reading, the performance of the RAID1 array is similar to that of the RAID0 array. This means that you will see a performance benefit with RAID1, but only when processes are reading concurrently. For example, if a process tries to access a large number of files in the background while you are trying to use a web browser or email client in the foreground. The main benefit of RAID1 is that your data is unlikely to be lost if a drive fails.

Video demo

Troubleshooting

If the above tests aren’t performing as you expect, you might have a bad or failing drive. Most modern hard drives have built-in Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (SMART). If your drive supports it, the smartctl command can be used to query your hard drive for its internal statistics:

# smartctl --health /dev/sda
# smartctl --log=error /dev/sda
# smartctl -x /dev/sda

Another way that you might be able to tune your PC for better performance is by changing your I/O scheduler. Linux systems support several I/O schedulers and the current default for Fedora systems is the multiqueue variant of the deadline scheduler. The default performs very well overall and scales extremely well for large servers with many processors and large disk arrays. There are, however, a few more specialized schedulers that might perform better under certain conditions.

To view which I/O scheduler your drives are using, issue the following command:

$ for i in /sys/block/sd?/queue/scheduler; do echo "$i: $(<$i)"; done

You can change the scheduler for a drive by writing the name of the desired scheduler to the /sys/block/<device name>/queue/scheduler file:

# echo bfq > /sys/block/sda/queue/scheduler

You can make your changes permanent by creating a udev rule for your drive. The following example shows how to create a udev rule that will set all rotational drives to use the BFQ I/O scheduler:

# cat << END > /etc/udev/rules.d/60-ioscheduler-rotational.rules
ACTION=="add|change", KERNEL=="sd[a-z]", ATTR{queue/rotational}=="1", ATTR{queue/scheduler}="bfq"
END

Here is another example that sets all solid-state drives to use the NOOP I/O scheduler:

# cat << END > /etc/udev/rules.d/60-ioscheduler-solid-state.rules
ACTION=="add|change", KERNEL=="sd[a-z]", ATTR{queue/rotational}=="0", ATTR{queue/scheduler}="none"
END

Changing your I/O scheduler won’t affect the raw throughput of your devices, but it might make your PC seem more responsive by prioritizing the bandwidth for the foreground tasks over the background tasks or by eliminating unnecessary block reordering.

Photo by James Donovan on Unsplash.

If you’ve been reading the Community blog, you’ll already know: AskFedora has moved to Discourse! Read on for more information about this exciting platform.

Discourse? Why Discourse?

The new AskFedora is a Discourse instance hosted by Discourse, similar to discussion.fedoraproject.org. However, where discussion.fedoraproject.org is meant for development discussion within the community, AskFedora is meant for end-user troubleshooting.

The Discourse platform focuses on conversations. Not only can you ask questions and receive answers, you can have complete dialogues with others. This is especially fitting since troubleshooting includes lots of bits that are neither questions nor answers. Instead, there are lots of suggestions, ideas, thoughts, comments, musings, none of which necessarily are the one true answer, but all of which are required steps that together lead us to the solution.

Apart from this fresh take on discussions, Discourse comes with a full set of features that make interacting with each other very easy.

Login using your Fedora account

Users accounts on the new AskFedora are managed by the Fedora account system only. A Fedora account gives you access to all of the infrastructure used by the Fedora community. This includes:

• The Fedora wiki
• Bugzilla
• Bodhi
• The mailing lists
• Pagure: our Git forge

This decision was made mainly to combat the spam and security issues previously encountered with the various social media login services.

So, unlike the current Askbot setup where you could login using different social media services, you will need to create a Fedora Account to use the new Discourse based instance. Luckily, creating a Fedora Account is very easy!

1. Go to https://admin.fedoraproject.org/accounts/user/new
2. Choose a username, enter your name, and a valid e-mail address, a security question.
3. Do the “captcha” to confirm that you are indeed a human, and confirm that you are older than 13 years of age.

That’s it! You now have a Fedora account.

Get started!

If you are using the platform for the first time, you should start with the “New users! Start here!” category. Here, we’ve put short summaries on how to use the platform effectively. This includes information on how to use Discourse, its many features that make it a great platform, notes on how to ask and respond to queries, subscribing and unsubscribing from categories, and lots more.

For the convenience of the global Fedora community, these summaries are available in all the languages that the community supports. So, please do take a minute to go over these introductory posts.

Discuss, learn, teach, have fun!

Please login, ask and discuss your queries and help each other out. As always, suggestions and feedback are always welcome. You can post these in the “Site feedback” category.

As a last note, please do remember to “be excellent to each other.” The Fedora Code of Conduct applies to all of us!

Acknowledgements

The Fedora community does everything together, so many volunteers joined forces and gave their resources to make this possible. We are most grateful to the Askbot developers who have hosted AskFedora till now, the Discourse team for hosting it now, and all the community members who helped set it up, and everyone that helps keep the Fedora community ticking along!

While modern IT environments move towards Linux containers, the need to secure these environments is as relevant as ever. Containers are a process isolation technology. While containers can be a defense mechanism, they only excel when combined with SELinux.

Fedora SELinux engineering built a new standalone tool, udica, to generate SELinux policy profiles for containers by automatically inspecting them. This article focuses on why udica is needed in the container world, and how it makes SELinux and containers work better together. You’ll find examples of SELinux separation for containers that let you avoid turning protection off because the generic SELinux type container_t is too tight. With udica you can easily customize the policy with limited SELinux policy writing skills.

SELinux technology

SELinux is a security technology that brings proactive security to Linux systems. It’s a labeling system that assigns a label to all subjects (processes and users) and objects (files, directories, sockets, etc.). These labels are then used in a security policy that controls access throughout the system. It’s important to mention that what’s not allowed in an SELinux security policy is denied by default. The policy rules are enforced by the kernel. This security technology has been in use on Fedora for several years. A real example of such a rule is:

allow httpd_t httpd_log_t: file { append create getattr ioctl lock open read setattr };

The rule allows any process labeled as httpd_t to create, append, read and lock files labeled as httpd_log_t. Using the ps command, you can list all processes with their labels:

$ ps -efZ | grep httpd
system_u:system_r:httpd_t:s0    root     13911     1  0 Apr14 ?       00:05:14 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND
...

To see which objects are labeled as httpd_log_t, use semanage:

# semanage fcontext -l | grep httpd_log_t
/var/log/httpd(/.)?                               all files          system_u:object_r:httpd_log_t:s0  
/var/log/nginx(/.)?                               all files          system_u:object_r:httpd_log_t:s0 
...

The SELinux security policy for Fedora is shipped in the selinux-policyRPM package.

SELinux vs. containers

In Fedora, the container-selinux RPM package provides a generic SELinux policy for all containers started by engines like podman or docker. Its main purposes are to protect the host system against a container process, and to separate containers from each other. For instance, containers confined by SELinux with the process type container_t can only read/execute files in /usr and write to container_file_t files type on host file system. To prevent attacks by containers on each other, Multi-Category Security (MCS) is used.

Using only one generic policy for containers is problematic, because of the huge variety of container usage. On one hand, the default container type (container_t) is often too strict. For example:

• Fedora SilverBlue needs containers to read/write a user’s home directory
• Fluentd project needs containers to be able to read logs in the /var/log directory

On the other hand, the default container type could be too loose for certain use cases:

• It has no SELinux network controls — all container processes can bind to any network port
• It has no SELinux control on Linux capabilities — all container processes can use all capabilities

There is one solution to handle both use cases: write a custom SELinux security policy for the container. This can be tricky, because SELinux expertise is required. For this purpose, the udica tool was created.

Introducing udica

Udica generates SELinux security profiles for containers. Its concept is based on the “block inheritance” feature inside the common intermediate language (CIL) supported by SELinux userspace. The tool creates a policy that combines:

• Rules inherited from specified CIL blocks (templates), and
• Rules discovered by inspection of container JSON file, which contains mountpoints and ports definitions

You can load the final policy immediately, or move it to another system to load into the kernel. Here’s an example, using a container that:

• Mounts /home as read only
• Mounts /var/spool as read/write
• Exposes port tcp/21

The container starts with this command:

# podman run -v /home:/home:ro -v /var/spool:/var/spool:rw -p 21:21 -it fedora bash

The default container type (container_t) doesn’t allow any of these three actions. To prove it, you could use the sesearch tool to query that the allow rules are present on system:

# sesearch -A -s container_t -t home_root_t -c dir -p read 

There’s no allow rule present that lets a process labeled as container_t access a directory labeled home_root_t (like the /home directory). The same situation occurs with /var/spool, which is labeled var_spool_t:

# sesearch -A -s container_t -t var_spool_t -c dir -p read

On the other hand, the default policy completely allows network access.

# sesearch -A -s container_t -t port_type -c tcp_socket
allow container_net_domain port_type:tcp_socket { name_bind name_connect recv_msg send_msg };
allow sandbox_net_domain port_type:tcp_socket { name_bind name_connect recv_msg send_msg };

Securing the container

It would be great to restrict this access and allow the container to bind just on TCP port 21 or with the same label. Imagine you find an example container using podman ps whose ID is 37a3635afb8f:

# podman ps -q
37a3635afb8f

You can now inspect the container and pass the inspection file to the udica tool. The name for the new policy is my_container.

# podman inspect 37a3635afb8f > container.json
# udica -j container.json my_container
Policy my_container with container id 37a3635afb8f created!

Please load these modules using:
 # semodule -i my_container.cil /usr/share/udica/templates/{base_container.cil,net_container.cil,home_container.cil}

Restart the container with: "--security-opt label=type:my_container.process" parameter

That’s it! You just created a custom SELinux security policy for the example container. Now you can load this policy into the kernel and make it active. The udica output above even tells you the command to use:

# semodule -i my_container.cil /usr/share/udica/templates/{base_container.cil,net_container.cil,home_container.cil}

Now you must restart the container to allow the container engine to use the new custom policy:

# podman run --security-opt label=type:my_container.process -v /home:/home:ro -v /var/spool:/var/spool:rw -p 21:21 -it fedora bash

The example container is now running in the newly created my_container.process SELinux process type:

# ps -efZ | grep my_container.process
unconfined_u:system_r:container_runtime_t:s0-s0:c0.c1023 root 2275 434  1 13:49 pts/1 00:00:00 podman run --security-opt label=type:my_container.process -v /home:/home:ro -v /var/spool:/var/spool:rw -p 21:21 -it fedora bash
system_u:system_r:my_container.process:s0:c270,c963 root 2317 2305  0 13:49 pts/0 00:00:00 bash

Seeing the results

The command sesearch now shows allow rules for accessing /home and /var/spool:

# sesearch -A -s my_container.process -t home_root_t -c dir -p read
allow my_container.process home_root_t:dir { getattr ioctl lock open read search };
# sesearch -A -s my_container.process -t var_spool_t -c dir -p read
allow my_container.process var_spool_t:dir { add_name getattr ioctl lock open read remove_name search write }

The new custom SELinux policy also allows my_container.process to bind only to TCP/UDP ports labeled the same as TCP port 21:

# semanage port -l | grep 21 | grep ftp
 ftp_port_t                     tcp      21, 989, 990
# sesearch -A -s my_container.process -c tcp_socket -p name_bind
 allow my_container.process ftp_port_t:tcp_socket name_bind;

Conclusion

The udica tool helps you create SELinux policies for containers based on an inspection file without any SELinux expertise required. Now you can increase the security of containerized environments. Sources are available on GitHub, and an RPM package is available in Fedora repositories for Fedora 28 and later.

Photo by Samuel Zeller on Unsplash.