Client Plug-Ins¶

The CernVM-FS client’s functionality can be extended through plug-ins. CernVM-FS plug-ins are binaries (processes) that communicate with the main client process through IPC. Currently, there are two plug-in interfaces: cache manager plugins and authorization helpers.

Cache Plugins¶

A cache plugin provides the functionality of the client’s local cache directory: it maintains a set of content-addressed objects. Clients can read from these objects. Depending on its capabilities, a cache plugin might also support addition of new objects, listing objects and eviction of objects from the cache.

Note

The CernVM-FS client trusts the contents of the cache. Cache plugins that store data in untrusted locations need to perform their own content verification before data is provided to the clients.

Cache plugins and clients exchange messages through a socket. The messages are serialized by the Google protobuf library. A description of the wire protocol can be found in the cvmfs/cache.proto source file, although the cache plugins should not directly implement the protocol. Instead, plugins are supposed to use the libcvmfs_cache library (part of the CernVM-FS development package), which takes care of the low-level protocol handling.

Good entry points into the development of a cache plugin are the demo plugin cvmfs/cache_plugin/cvmfs_cache_null.cc and the production in-memory cache plugin cvmfs/cache_plugin/cvmfs_cache_ram.cc. The CernVM-FS unit test suite has a unit test driver, cvmfs_test_cache, with a number of tests that are helpful for the development and debugging of a cache plugin.

Broadly speaking, a cache plugin process performs the following steps

#include <libcvmfs_cache.h>

cvmcache_init_global();
// Option parsing, which can use cvmcache_options_... functions to parse
// CernVM-FS client configuration files

// Optionally: spawning the watchdog to create stack traces when the cache
// plugin crashes
cvmcache_spawn_watchdog(NULL);

// Create a plugin context by passing function pointers to callbacks
struct cvmcache_context *ctx = cvmcache_init(&callbacks);

// Connect to the socket defined by the locator string
cvmcache_listen(ctx, locator);

// Spawn an I/O thread in which the callback functions are called
cvmcache_process_requests(ctx, 0);

// Depending on whether the plugin is started independently or by the
// CernVM-FS client, cvmcache_process_requests() termination behaves
// differently

if (!cvmcache_is_supervised()) {
  // Decide when the plugin should be terminated, e.g. wait for a signal
  cvmcache_terminate(ctx);
}

// Cleanup
cvmcache_wait_for(ctx);
cvmcache_terminate_watchdog();
cvmcache_cleanup_global();

The core of the cache plugin is the implementation of the callback functions provided to cvmcache_init(). Not all callback functions need to be implemented. Some can be set to NULL, which needs to correspond to the indicated plugin capabilities specified in the capabilities bit vector.

Basic Capabilities¶

Objects maintained by the cache plugin are identified by their content hash. Every cache plugin must be able to check whether a certain object is available or not and, if it is available, provide data from the object. This functionality is provided by the cvmcache_chrefcnt(), cvmcache_obj_info(), and cvmcache_pread() callbacks. With only this functionality, the cache plugin can be used as a read-only lower layer in a tiered cache but not as a stand-alone cache manager.

For a proper stand-alone cache manager, the plugin must keep reference counting for its objects. The concept of reference counting is borrowed from link counts in UNIX file systems. Every object in a cache plugin has a reference counter that indicates how many times the object is being in use by CernVM-FS clients. For objects in use, clients expect that reading succeeds, i.e. objects in use must not be deleted.

Adding Objects¶

On a cache miss, clients need to populate the cache with the missing object. To do so, cache plugins provide a transactional write interface. The upload of an object results in the following call chain:

A call to cvmcache_start_txn() with a given transaction ID

Zero, one, or multiple calls to cvmcache_write_txn() that append data

A call to cvmcache_commit_txn() or cvmcache_abort_txn()

Only after commit the object must be accessible for reading. Multiple concurrent transactions on the same object are possible. After commit, the reference counter of the object needs to be equal to the number of transactions that committed the object (usually 1).

Listing and Cache Space Management¶

Listing of the objects in the cache and the ability to evict objects from the cache are optional capabilities. Only objects whose reference counter is zero may be evicted. Clients can keep file catalogs open for a long time, thereby preventing them from being evicted. To mitigate that fact, cache plugins can at any time send a notification to clients using cvmcache_ask_detach(), asking them to close as many nested catalogs as they can.

Authorization Helpers¶

Client authorization helpers (authz helper) can be used to grant or deny read access to a mounted repository. To do so, authorization helpers can verify the local UNIX user (uid/gid) and the process ID (pid) that is issuing a file system request.

An authz helper is spawned by CernVM-FS if the root file catalog contains membership requirement (see below). The binary to be spawned is derived from the membership requirement, but it can be overwritten with the CVMFS_AUTHZ_HELPER parameter. The authz helper listens for commands on stdin, and it replies on stdout.

Grant/deny decisions are typically cached for a while by the client. Note that replies are cached for the entire session (session ID) that contains the calling process ID.

Membership Requirement¶

The root file catalog of a repository determines if and which authz helper should be used by a client. The membership requirement (also called VOMS authorization) can be set, unset, and changed when creating a repository and on every publish operation. It has the form

<helper>%<membership string>

The <helper> component helps the client find an authz helper. The client searches for a binary ${CVMFS_AUTHZ_SEARCH_PATH}/cvmfs_<helper>_helper. By default, the search path is /usr/libexec/cvmfs/authz. CernVM-FS comes with two helpers: cvmfs_helper_allow and cvmfs_helper_deny. Both helpers make static decisions and disregard the membership string. Other helpers can use the membership string to specify user groups that are allowed to access a repository.

Authz Helper Protocol¶

The authz helper gets spawned by the CernVM-FS client with stdin and stdout connected. There is a command/reply style of messages. Messages have a 4 byte version (=1), a 4 byte length, and then a JSON text that needs to contain the top-level struct cvmfs_authz_v1 { ... }. Communication starts with a handshake where the client passes logging parameters to the authz helper. The client then sends zero or more authorization requests, each of which is answered by a positive or negative permit. A positive permit can include an access token that should be used to download data. The permits are cached by the client with a TTL chosen by the authz helper. On unmount, the client sends a quit command to the authz helper.

When spawned, the authz helper’s environment is prepopulated with all CVMFS_AUTHZ_... environment variables that are in the CernVM-FS client’s environment. Furthermore, the parameter CVMFS_AUTHZ_HELPER=yes is set.

The JSON snippet of every message contains msgid and revision integer fields. The revision is currently 0 and unused. Message IDs indicate certain other fields that can or should be present. Additional JSON text is ignored. The message ID can be one of the following

Code	Meaning
0	Cvmfs: “Hello, helper, are you there?” (handshake)
1	Helper: “Yes, cvmfs, I’m here” (handshake reply)
2	Cvmfs: “Please verify, helper” (verification request)
3	Helper: “I verified, cvmfs, here’s the result” (permit)
4	Cvmfs: “Please shutdown, helper” (termination)

Handshake and Termination¶

In the JSON snippet of the handshake, the CernVM-FS client transmits the fully qualified repository name (fqrn string field) and the syslog facility and syslog level the helper is supposed to use (syslog_facility, syslog_level integer fields). The handshake reply as well as the termination have no additional payload.

Verification Requests¶

A verification request contains the uid, gid, and pid of the calling process (uid, gid, pid integer fields). It furthermore contains the Base64 encoded membership string from the membership requirement (membership string field).

The permit has to contain a status indicating success or failure (status integer field) and a time to live for this reply in seconds (ttl integer field). The status can be one of the following

Code	Meaning
0	Success (allow access)
1	Authentication token of the user not found (deny access)
2	Invalid authentication token (deny access)
3	User is not member of the required groups (deny access)

On success, the permit can optionally contain a Base64 encoded version of either an X.509 proxy certificate (x509_proxy string field) or a bearer token (bearer_token string field). These credentials are used by the CernVM-FS client when downloading nested catalogs files as client-side HTTPS authentication information.