So far we opened a new Varlink connection for every mountfsd/nsresourced
method call. Given each tool only does a very small number of calls
(usually 1…5) on them and the connections are cheap this is not too
wasteful. Nonetheless, let's do something about it, and allow reusing
the connection for multiple calls.
This not only makes things a bit more efficient, but has one more
important benefit: Varlink connections pin the security context of the
client when connecting. This means that varlink method calls done with a
connection established while some code was privileged will still operate
as privieged once privs are dropped, until the connection is closed.
This pinning effect is really nice, as it gives us behaviour in a
"capability system" like scheme. Later code is going to use that to
continue doing certain priv userns ops even after unsharing userns and
becoming fully unpriv.
Antonio Alvarez Feijoo
Lennart Poettering