Pulseaudio snap permissions

[David Henningsson]

On 2016-02-09 15:49, Jamie Strandboge wrote:
> CC'ing Zygmunt as fyi for skills requirements
>
> On Tue, 2016-02-09 at 14:00 +0100, David Henningsson wrote:
>> Hi snappy-devel,
>>
>> I've been working on packaging PulseAudio for snappy in order to
>> enable
>> apps to play back audio. I've come as far as I need to have the
>> permissions conversation with someone more familiar with snappy.
>>
> You probably want to talk to me. :) First off, is this for 15.04 or
> 16.04? If 16.04, as Mark said, we want to move to a skills-only
> approach.

16.04.

>
>> PulseAudio needs to do at least these things:
>>
>>    * Listen to a UNIX socket where clients can connect (there are a
>> few
>> options w r t where this socket could be located so clients find it).
>>
> This is possible with the 'socket' options in the yaml for 15.04. For
> 16.04, this is still available but I imagine this is going to change in
> favor of a skills approach that is TBD for sockets.

Right now, it seems to work with 16.04 with "write-path"/"read-path" 
security-overrides, it's more about finding the right location for it.

>>    * Access ALSA sound cards, i e ioctl device nodes under
>> /dev/snd/*.
>> (Note: UNIX permissions of these nodes might need adjustment too
>> depending on solution)
>>
> You would use hw-assign on 15.04 and the skills approach on 16.04 (not
> yet implemented for /dev/snd/* devices).
>
>>    * Listen to udev events to tell when new sound cards appear in the
>> system (e g, someone might connect a USB headset).
>>
> You would need (hand-crafted) security-policy for this on 15.04. We'll
> want to take a close look at what this is doing as I imagine this would
> need to fall under an 'audio-manager' (or audio-managing) skill.

I've got this to work with a read-path override of /run/udev/data/*

>>    * Get on the system D-Bus in order to speak with the bluetooth
>> daemon
>> (in order to enable audio I/O through bluetooth headsets).
>>
> Use 'bus-name' and set 'type: framework' on 15.04. On 16.04, this, you
> guessed it, will be skills based (not yet implemented but needed for
> several things (eg, bluez)).
>
>>    * Gain real-time priority in order to have low-latency audio
>> working
>> without glitches.
>>
> This sounds like a pure security skill.
>>
>> Right now, I'm not sure whether PulseAudio should run as a user-level
>> or
>> system-level daemon - I expect this will affect what solutions we
>> choose
>> for security too.
>>
> Snappy doesn't currently have the concept of user services, so sounds
> like system-level is the way to go for now.

Ok - what user account will such a service run as?

>> So far I've been working with customizing snapcraft.yaml only, but
>> maybe
>> this reaches beyond what snapcraft can handle and some special
>> apparmor
>> and/or seccomp profiles need to be crafted. Not sure about this
>> either?
>
> Once the skills work is farther along we'll define a way for people to
> engage with the snappy team for requesting new skills. For now, I
> suggest working with me on irc or off-list so I can help unblock you
> and so we (zyga and I) can work out what this snap needs and can work
> out the skills needed for 16.04.

Ok, will do! Thanks.


-- 
David Henningsson, Canonical Ltd.
https://launchpad.net/~diwic