Re: Login to a guix container

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Ryan Prior <ryanprior@hey.com> writes:

> On January 24, 2021, Pjotr Prins <pjotr.public12@thebird.nl> wrote:
>> I was just thinking that it should be possible to login with ssh into
>> a GNU Guix shell running in a container that gets fired up by the
>> sshd. I am thinking about a safe shell for fetching files. If this
>> works no chroot setup is required.
>>
>> Or is this a really dumb idea :)
>
> I haven't seen any serious audit investigating security properties of
> Guix containers. I do not think it's dumb to try this as an experiment,
> but I do think it would be malpractice to trust user data with this
> system before appropriately thorough evaluation.

In your requirements for an audit, how does a “Guix container” differ
from a “Linux container”?  Guix uses the kernel features like cloning
namespaces and unsharing the filesystem directly.  It merely mounts
individual store locations into the filesystem namespace.

“Malpractice” is a very big word for using user namespaces instead of
chroot without a “serious audit”.

-- 
Ricardo