4.1.1.1 Data Structures

In jail.c, the first thing I would note is the declaration of an important structure struct jail j; which was included from /usr/include/sys/jail.h.

The definition of the jail structure is:

/usr/include/sys/jail.h: 

struct jail {
        u_int32_t       version;
        char            *path;
        char            *hostname;
        u_int32_t       ip_number;
};

As you can see, there is an entry for each of the arguments passed to the jail program, and indeed, they are set during its execution.

/usr/src/usr.sbin/jail.c
j.version = 0; 
j.path = argv[1];
j.hostname = argv[2];

4.1.1.2 Networking

One of the arguments passed to the Jail program is an IP address with which the jail can be accessed over the network. Jail translates the ip address given into network byte order and then stores it in j (the jail structure).

/usr/src/usr.sbin/jail/jail.c:
struct in.addr in; 
... 
i = inet.aton(argv[3], &in); 
... 
j.ip_number = ntohl(in.s.addr);

The inet_aton(3) function "interprets the specified character string as an Internet address, placing the address into the structure provided." The ip number node in the jail structure is set only when the ip address placed onto the in structure by inet aton is translated into network byte order by ntohl().

4.1.1.3 Jailing The Process

Finally, the userland program jails the process, and executes the command specified. Jail now becomes an imprisoned process itself and forks a child process which then executes the command given using execv(3)

/usr/src/sys/usr.sbin/jail/jail.c
i = jail(&j); 
... 
i = execv(argv[4], argv + 4);

As you can see, the jail function is being called, and its argument is the jail structure which has been filled with the arguments given to the program. Finally, the program you specify is executed. I will now discuss how Jail is implemented within the kernel.

4.1.2.1 sysctls

In kern_jail.c, the following sysctls are defined:

/usr/src/sys/kern/kern_jail.c:

int     jail_set_hostname_allowed = 1;
SYSCTL_INT(_jail, OID_AUTO, set_hostname_allowed, CTLFLAG_RW,
    &jail_set_hostname_allowed, 0,
    "Processes in jail can set their hostnames");

int     jail_socket_unixiproute_only = 1;
SYSCTL_INT(_jail, OID_AUTO, socket_unixiproute_only, CTLFLAG_RW,
    &jail_socket_unixiproute_only, 0,
    "Processes in jail are limited to creating UNIX/IPv4/route sockets only
");

int     jail_sysvipc_allowed = 0;
SYSCTL_INT(_jail, OID_AUTO, sysvipc_allowed, CTLFLAG_RW,
    &jail_sysvipc_allowed, 0,
    "Processes in jail can use System V IPC primitives");

Each of these sysctls can be accessed by the user through the sysctl program. Throughout the kernel, these specific sysctls are recognized by their name. For example, the name of the first sysctl is jail.set.hostname.allowed.

4.1.2.2 jail(2) system call

Like all system calls, the jail(2) system call takes two arguments, struct proc *p and struct jail_args *uap. p is a pointer to a proc structure which describes the calling process. In this context, uap is a pointer to a structure which specifies the arguments given to jail(2) from the userland program jail.c. When I described the userland program before, you saw that the jail(2) system call was given a jail structure as its own argument.

/usr/src/sys/kern/kern_jail.c:
int
jail(p, uap)
        struct proc *p;
        struct jail_args /* {
                syscallarg(struct jail *) jail;
        } */ *uap;

Therefore, uap->jail would access the jail structure which was passed to the system call. Next, the system call copies the jail structure into kernel space using the copyin() function. copyin() takes three arguments: the data which is to be copied into kernel space, uap->jail, where to store it, j and the size of the storage. The jail structure uap->jail is copied into kernel space and stored in another jail structure, j.

/usr/src/sys/kern/kern_jail.c: 
error = copyin(uap->jail, &j, sizeof j);

There is another important structure defined in jail.h. It is the prison structure (pr). The prison structure is used exclusively within kernel space. The jail(2) system call copies everything from the jail structure onto the prison structure. Here is the definition of the prison structure.

/usr/include/sys/jail.h:
struct prison {
        int             pr_ref;
        char            pr_host[MAXHOSTNAMELEN];
        u_int32_t       pr_ip;
        void            *pr_linux;
};

The jail() system call then allocates memory for a pointer to a prison structure and copies data between the two structures.

/usr/src/sys/kern/kern_jail.c:
 MALLOC(pr, struct prison *, sizeof *pr , M_PRISON, M_WAITOK);
 bzero((caddr_t)pr, sizeof *pr);
 error = copyinstr(j.hostname, &pr->pr_host, sizeof pr->pr_host, 0);
 if (error) 
         goto bail;

Finally, the jail system call chroots the path specified. The chroot function is given two arguments. The first is p, which represents the calling process, the second is a pointer to the structure chroot args. The structure chroot args contains the path which is to be chrooted. As you can see, the path specified in the jail structure is copied to the chroot args structure and used.

/usr/src/sys/kern/kern_jail.c:
ca.path = j.path; 
error = chroot(p, &ca);

These next three lines in the source are very important, as they specify how the kernel recognizes a process as jailed. Each process on a UNIX system is described by its own proc structure. You can see the whole proc structure in /usr/include/sys/proc.h. For example, the p argument in any system call is actually a pointer to that process' proc structure, as stated before. The proc structure contains nodes which can describe the owner's identity (p_cred), the process resource limits (p_limit), and so on. In the definition of the process structure, there is a pointer to a prison structure. (p_prison).

/usr/include/sys/proc.h: 
struct proc { 
...
struct prison *p_prison; 
...
};

In kern_jail.c, the function then copies the pr structure, which is filled with all the information from the original jail structure, over to the p->p_prison structure. It then does a bitwise OR of p->p_flag with the constant P_JAILED, meaning that the calling process is now recognized as jailed. The parent process of each process, forked within the jail, is the program jail itself, as it calls the jail(2) system call. When the program is executed through execve, it inherits the properties of its parents proc structure, therefore it has the p->p_flag set, and the p->p_prison structure is filled.

/usr/src/sys/kern/kern_jail.c
p->p.prison = pr; 
p->p.flag |= P.JAILED;

When a process is forked from a parent process, the fork(2) system call deals differently with imprisoned processes. In the fork system call, there are two pointers to a proc structure p1 and p2. p1 points to the parent's proc structure and p2 points to the child's unfilled proc structure. After copying all relevant data between the structures, fork(2) checks if the structure p->p_prison is filled on p2. If it is, it increments the pr.ref by one, and sets the p_flag to one on the child process.

/usr/src/sys/kern/kern_fork.c:
if (p2->p_prison) {
        p2->p_prison->pr_ref++;
    p2->p_flag |= P_JAILED;
}