tree: 5035102ea3b2071cfbdc99275b59d4317aa05439 [path history] [tgz]
  1. conf/
  2. src/
  3. build.rs
  4. Cargo.toml
  5. OWNERS
  6. README.md
os_install_service/README.md

os_install_service

This directory contains the OS install D-Bus service. The service is used to install the OS to disk.

The service exposes a single method, StartOsInstall. This method takes no parameters; the service chooses an appropriate disk to install to without any user input. Updates are provided with the OsInstallStatusChanged signal. Currently there is no percentage-complete report, the signal just indicates if the install succeeded or failed. The signal also includes the install log so that error details can be presented.

This service (when included in the OS image) only runs when the OS is live booted from an installer image. This is checked in the upstart script by running is_running_from_installer, which compares the sizes of the root-A and root-B partitions. If they are the same size, then the OS is considered installed, whereas if the sizes are different then the OS is running from an installer image with a stub root-B partition. Note that this check would break if the USB layout is ever changed to include a full-size root-B partition.

To test the service manually:

dbus-monitor --system sender=org.chromium.OsInstallService

sudo -u chronos dbus-send --print-reply --system \
    --dest=org.chromium.OsInstallService \
    /org/chromium/OsInstallService \
    org.chromium.OsInstallService.StartOsInstall

Security

The service is currently run as root. This is a list of known blockers preventing it from running as a less-privileged user, there are probably more issues not yet known:

  • platform2/installer/chromeos-install expects to run as root. If not run as root, it sudos itself. This check could be removed, or altered to check something more limited (e.g. test itself for the CAP_SYS_ADMIN capability), or enabled by default but with a way to turn it off manually such as by setting an env var.
  • platform2/chromeos-common-script/share/chromeos-common.sh has something similar with the maybe_sudo function. chromeos-install depends on this in a few places. Could be solved in similar ways as described above.
  • chromeos-install needs to mount and unmount disk partitions. This is possible to do with CAP_SYS_ADMIN, but the currently-installed version (2.32) of the mount and umount utilities explicitly checks uid==0. This has been fixed in newer versions so could be fixed by upgrading the sys-apps/util-linux package.
  • chromeos-install installs most partitions with dd copies, but the stateful partition is installed by creating a fresh file system and then using cp to transfer specific directories. Many of those files are owned by root, and the root directory of the destination is also owned by root.

See also b/185422901 for adding an selinux policy to further restrict the service.