selinux: cache the SID -> context string translation

Translating a context struct to string can be quite slow, especially if
the context has a lot of category bits set. This can cause quite
noticeable performance impact in situations where the translation needs
to be done repeatedly. A common example is a UNIX datagram socket with
the SO_PASSSEC option enabled, which is used e.g. by systemd-journald
when receiving log messages via datagram socket. This scenario can be
reproduced with:

    cat /dev/urandom | base64 | logger &
    timeout 30s perf record -p $(pidof systemd-journald) -a -g
    kill %1
    perf report -g none --pretty raw | grep security_secid_to_secctx

Before the caching introduced by this patch, computing the context
string (security_secid_to_secctx() function) takes up ~65% of
systemd-journald's CPU time (assuming a context with 1024 categories
set and Fedora x86_64 release kernel configs). After this patch
(assuming near-perfect cache hit ratio) this overhead is reduced to just
~2%.

This patch addresses the issue by caching a certain number (compile-time
configurable) of recently used context strings to speed up repeated
translations of the same context, while using only a small amount of
memory.

The cache is integrated into the existing sidtab table by adding a field
to each entry, which when not NULL contains an RCU-protected pointer to
a cache entry containing the cached string. The cache entries are kept
in a linked list sorted according to how recently they were used. On a
cache miss when the cache is full, the least recently used entry is
removed to make space for the new entry.

The patch migrates security_sid_to_context_core() to use the cache (also
a few other functions where it was possible without too much fuss, but
these mostly use the translation for logging in case of error, which is
rare).

Link: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1733259
Cc: Michal Sekletar <msekleta@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Ondrej Mosnacek <omosnace@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Stephen Smalley <sds@tycho.nsa.gov>
Tested-by: Stephen Smalley <sds@tycho.nsa.gov>
Reviewed-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@kernel.org>
[PM: lots of merge fixups due to collisions with other sidtab patches]
Signed-off-by: Paul Moore <paul@paul-moore.com>

1 files changed, 11 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/security/selinux/Kconfig b/security/selinux/Kconfig
index c9e576c430c2..996d35d950f7 100644
--- a/security/selinux/Kconfig
+++ b/security/selinux/Kconfig
@@ -97,3 +97,14 @@ config SECURITY_SELINUX_SIDTAB_HASH_BITS
 	  collisions may be viewed at /sys/fs/selinux/ss/sidtab_hash_stats. If
 	  chain lengths are high (e.g. > 20) then selecting a higher value here
 	  will ensure that lookups times are short and stable.
+
+config SECURITY_SELINUX_SID2STR_CACHE_SIZE
+	int "NSA SELinux SID to context string translation cache size"
+	depends on SECURITY_SELINUX
+	default 256
+	help
+	  This option defines the size of the internal SID -> context string
+	  cache, which improves the performance of context to string
+	  conversion.  Setting this option to 0 disables the cache completely.
+
+	  If unsure, keep the default value.