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We're generally not proponents of rewrites (nasty uncomfortable things
that make you late for dinner!). So why rewrite Binder?
Binder has been evolving over the past 15+ years to meet the evolving
needs of Android. Its responsibilities, expectations, and complexity
have grown considerably during that time. While we expect Binder to
continue to evolve along with Android, there are a number of factors
that currently constrain our ability to develop/maintain it. Briefly
those are:
1. Complexity: Binder is at the intersection of everything in Android and
fulfills many responsibilities beyond IPC. It has become many things
to many people, and due to its many features and their interactions
with each other, its complexity is quite high. In just 6kLOC it must
deliver transactions to the right threads. It must correctly parse
and translate the contents of transactions, which can contain several
objects of different types (e.g., pointers, fds) that can interact
with each other. It controls the size of thread pools in userspace,
and ensures that transactions are assigned to threads in ways that
avoid deadlocks where the threadpool has run out of threads. It must
track refcounts of objects that are shared by several processes by
forwarding refcount changes between the processes correctly. It must
handle numerous error scenarios and it combines/nests 13 different
locks, 7 reference counters, and atomic variables. Finally, It must
do all of this as fast and efficiently as possible. Minor performance
regressions can cause a noticeably degraded user experience.
2. Things to improve: Thousand-line functions [1], error-prone error
handling [2], and confusing structure can occur as a code base grows
organically. After more than a decade of development, this codebase
could use an overhaul.
[1]: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/android/binder.c?h=v6.5#n2896
[2]: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/android/binder.c?h=v6.5#n3658
3. Security critical: Binder is a critical part of Android's sandboxing
strategy. Even Android's most de-privileged sandboxes (e.g. the
Chrome renderer, or SW Codec) have direct access to Binder. More than
just about any other component, it's important that Binder provide
robust security, and itself be robust against security
vulnerabilities.
It's #1 (high complexity) that has made continuing to evolve Binder and
resolving #2 (tech debt) exceptionally difficult without causing #3
(security issues). For Binder to continue to meet Android's needs, we
need better ways to manage (and reduce!) complexity without increasing
the risk.
The biggest change is obviously the choice of programming language. We
decided to use Rust because it directly addresses a number of the
challenges within Binder that we have faced during the last years. It
prevents mistakes with ref counting, locking, bounds checking, and also
does a lot to reduce the complexity of error handling. Additionally,
we've been able to use the more expressive type system to encode the
ownership semantics of the various structs and pointers, which takes the
complexity of managing object lifetimes out of the hands of the
programmer, reducing the risk of use-after-frees and similar problems.
Rust has many different pointer types that it uses to encode ownership
semantics into the type system, and this is probably one of the most
important aspects of how it helps in Binder. The Binder driver has a lot
of different objects that have complex ownership semantics; some
pointers own a refcount, some pointers have exclusive ownership, and
some pointers just reference the object and it is kept alive in some
other manner. With Rust, we can use a different pointer type for each
kind of pointer, which enables the compiler to enforce that the
ownership semantics are implemented correctly.
Another useful feature is Rust's error handling. Rust allows for more
simplified error handling with features such as destructors, and you get
compilation failures if errors are not properly handled. This means that
even though Rust requires you to spend more lines of code than C on
things such as writing down invariants that are left implicit in C, the
Rust driver is still slightly smaller than C binder: Rust is 5.5kLOC and
C is 5.8kLOC. (These numbers are excluding blank lines, comments,
binderfs, and any debugging facilities in C that are not yet implemented
in the Rust driver. The numbers include abstractions in rust/kernel/
that are unlikely to be used by other drivers than Binder.)
Although this rewrite completely rethinks how the code is structured and
how assumptions are enforced, we do not fundamentally change *how* the
driver does the things it does. A lot of careful thought has gone into
the existing design. The rewrite is aimed rather at improving code
health, structure, readability, robustness, security, maintainability
and extensibility. We also include more inline documentation, and
improve how assumptions in the code are enforced. Furthermore, all
unsafe code is annotated with a SAFETY comment that explains why it is
correct.
We have left the binderfs filesystem component in C. Rewriting it in
Rust would be a large amount of work and requires a lot of bindings to
the file system interfaces. Binderfs has not historically had the same
challenges with security and complexity, so rewriting binderfs seems to
have lower value than the rest of Binder.
Correctness and feature parity
------------------------------
Rust binder passes all tests that validate the correctness of Binder in
the Android Open Source Project. We can boot a device, and run a variety
of apps and functionality without issues. We have performed this both on
the Cuttlefish Android emulator device, and on a Pixel 6 Pro.
As for feature parity, Rust binder currently implements all features
that C binder supports, with the exception of some debugging facilities.
The missing debugging facilities will be added before we submit the Rust
implementation upstream.
Tracepoints
-----------
I did not include all of the tracepoints as I felt that the mechansim
for making C access fields of Rust structs should be discussed on list
separately. I also did not include the support for building Rust Binder
as a module since that requires exporting a bunch of additional symbols
on the C side.
Original RFC Link with old benchmark numbers:
https://lore.kernel.org/r/20231101-rust-binder-v1-0-08ba9197f637@google.com
Co-developed-by: Wedson Almeida Filho <wedsonaf@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Wedson Almeida Filho <wedsonaf@gmail.com>
Co-developed-by: Matt Gilbride <mattgilbride@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Matt Gilbride <mattgilbride@google.com>
Acked-by: Carlos Llamas <cmllamas@google.com>
Acked-by: Paul Moore <paul@paul-moore.com>
Signed-off-by: Alice Ryhl <aliceryhl@google.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20250919-rust-binder-v2-1-a384b09f28dd@google.com
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
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Introduce a generic netlink multicast event to report binder transaction
failures to userspace. This allows subscribers to monitor these events
and take appropriate actions, such as stopping a misbehaving application
that is spamming a service with huge amount of transactions.
The multicast event contains full details of the failed transactions,
including the sender/target PIDs, payload size and specific error code.
This interface is defined using a YAML spec, from which the UAPI and
kernel headers and source are auto-generated.
Signed-off-by: Li Li <dualli@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Carlos Llamas <cmllamas@google.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20250727182932.2499194-4-cmllamas@google.com
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
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Convert the existing binder_alloc_selftest tests into KUnit tests. These
tests allocate and free an exhaustive combination of buffers with
various sizes and alignments. This change allows them to be run without
blocking or otherwise interfering with other processes in binder.
This test is refactored into more meaningful cases in the subsequent
patch.
Signed-off-by: Tiffany Yang <ynaffit@google.com>
Acked-by: Carlos Llamas <cmllamas@google.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20250714185321.2417234-6-ynaffit@google.com
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
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Add setup and teardown for testing binder allocator code with KUnit.
Include minimal test cases to verify that tests are initialized
correctly.
Tested-by: Rae Moar <rmoar@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Tiffany Yang <ynaffit@google.com>
Acked-by: Carlos Llamas <cmllamas@google.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20250714185321.2417234-5-ynaffit@google.com
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
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Add SPDX license identifiers to all Make/Kconfig files which:
- Have no license information of any form
These files fall under the project license, GPL v2 only. The resulting SPDX
license identifier is:
GPL-2.0-only
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
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As discussed at Linux Plumbers Conference 2018 in Vancouver [1] this is the
implementation of binderfs.
/* Abstract */
binderfs is a backwards-compatible filesystem for Android's binder ipc
mechanism. Each ipc namespace will mount a new binderfs instance. Mounting
binderfs multiple times at different locations in the same ipc namespace
will not cause a new super block to be allocated and hence it will be the
same filesystem instance.
Each new binderfs mount will have its own set of binder devices only
visible in the ipc namespace it has been mounted in. All devices in a new
binderfs mount will follow the scheme binder%d and numbering will always
start at 0.
/* Backwards compatibility */
Devices requested in the Kconfig via CONFIG_ANDROID_BINDER_DEVICES for the
initial ipc namespace will work as before. They will be registered via
misc_register() and appear in the devtmpfs mount. Specifically, the
standard devices binder, hwbinder, and vndbinder will all appear in their
standard locations in /dev. Mounting or unmounting the binderfs mount in
the initial ipc namespace will have no effect on these devices, i.e. they
will neither show up in the binderfs mount nor will they disappear when the
binderfs mount is gone.
/* binder-control */
Each new binderfs instance comes with a binder-control device. No other
devices will be present at first. The binder-control device can be used to
dynamically allocate binder devices. All requests operate on the binderfs
mount the binder-control device resides in.
Assuming a new instance of binderfs has been mounted at /dev/binderfs
via mount -t binderfs binderfs /dev/binderfs. Then a request to create a
new binder device can be made as illustrated in [2].
Binderfs devices can simply be removed via unlink().
/* Implementation details */
- dynamic major number allocation:
When binderfs is registered as a new filesystem it will dynamically
allocate a new major number. The allocated major number will be returned
in struct binderfs_device when a new binder device is allocated.
- global minor number tracking:
Minor are tracked in a global idr struct that is capped at
BINDERFS_MAX_MINOR. The minor number tracker is protected by a global
mutex. This is the only point of contention between binderfs mounts.
- struct binderfs_info:
Each binderfs super block has its own struct binderfs_info that tracks
specific details about a binderfs instance:
- ipc namespace
- dentry of the binder-control device
- root uid and root gid of the user namespace the binderfs instance
was mounted in
- mountable by user namespace root:
binderfs can be mounted by user namespace root in a non-initial user
namespace. The devices will be owned by user namespace root.
- binderfs binder devices without misc infrastructure:
New binder devices associated with a binderfs mount do not use the
full misc_register() infrastructure.
The misc_register() infrastructure can only create new devices in the
host's devtmpfs mount. binderfs does however only make devices appear
under its own mountpoint and thus allocates new character device nodes
from the inode of the root dentry of the super block. This will have
the side-effect that binderfs specific device nodes do not appear in
sysfs. This behavior is similar to devpts allocated pts devices and
has no effect on the functionality of the ipc mechanism itself.
[1]: https://goo.gl/JL2tfX
[2]: program to allocate a new binderfs binder device:
#define _GNU_SOURCE
#include <errno.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <sys/ioctl.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <linux/android/binder_ctl.h>
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
int fd, ret, saved_errno;
size_t len;
struct binderfs_device device = { 0 };
if (argc < 2)
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
len = strlen(argv[1]);
if (len > BINDERFS_MAX_NAME)
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
memcpy(device.name, argv[1], len);
fd = open("/dev/binderfs/binder-control", O_RDONLY | O_CLOEXEC);
if (fd < 0) {
printf("%s - Failed to open binder-control device\n",
strerror(errno));
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
ret = ioctl(fd, BINDER_CTL_ADD, &device);
saved_errno = errno;
close(fd);
errno = saved_errno;
if (ret < 0) {
printf("%s - Failed to allocate new binder device\n",
strerror(errno));
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
printf("Allocated new binder device with major %d, minor %d, and "
"name %s\n", device.major, device.minor,
device.name);
exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}
Cc: Martijn Coenen <maco@android.com>
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner <christian.brauner@ubuntu.com>
Acked-by: Todd Kjos <tkjos@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
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binder_alloc_selftest tests that alloc_new_buf handles page allocation and
deallocation properly when allocate and free buffers. The test allocates 5
buffers of various sizes to cover all possible page alignment cases, and
frees the buffers using a list of exhaustive freeing order.
Test: boot the device with ANDROID_BINDER_IPC_SELFTEST config option
enabled. Allocator selftest passes.
Signed-off-by: Sherry Yang <sherryy@android.com>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
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Move the binder allocator functionality to its own file
Continuation of splitting the binder allocator from the binder
driver. Split binder_alloc functions from normal binder functions.
Add kernel doc comments to functions declared extern in
binder_alloc.h
Signed-off-by: Todd Kjos <tkjos@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
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The Android binder code has been "stable" for many years now. No matter
what comes in the future, we are going to have to support this API, so
might as well move it to the "real" part of the kernel as there's no
real work that needs to be done to the existing code.
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
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