#define _GNU_SOURCE /* See feature_test_macros(7) */ #include <sched.h> int setns(int fd, int nstype);
The fd argument is a file descriptor referring to one of the namespace entries in a /proc/[pid]/ns/ directory; see proc(5) for further information on /proc/[pid]/ns/. The calling thread will be reassociated with the corresponding namespace, subject to any constraints imposed by the nstype argument.
The nstype argument specifies which type of namespace the calling thread may be reassociated with. This argument can have one of the following values:
Specifying nstype as 0 suffices if the caller knows (or does not care) what type of namespace is referred to by fd. Specifying a nonzero value for nstype is useful if the caller does not know what type of namespace is referred to by fd and wants to ensure that the namespace is of a particular type. (The caller might not know the type of the namespace referred to by fd if the file descriptor was opened by another process and, for example, passed to the caller via a UNIX domain socket.)
The following shell session demonstrates the use of this program (compiled as a binary named ns_exec) in conjunction with the CLONE_NEWUTS example program in the clone(2) man page (complied as a binary named newuts).
We begin by executing the example program in clone(2) in the background. That program creates a child in a separate UTS namespace. The child changes the hostname in its namespace, and then both processes display the hostnames in their UTS namespaces, so that we can see that they are different.
$ su # Need privilege for namespace operations Password: # ./newuts bizarro & [1] 3549 clone() returned 3550 uts.nodename in child: bizarro uts.nodename in parent: antero # uname -n # Verify hostname in the shell antero
We then run the program shown below, using it to execute a shell. Inside that shell, we verify that the hostname is the one set by the child created by the first program:
# ./ns_exec /proc/3550/ns/uts /bin/bash # uname -n # Executed in shell started by ns_exec bizarro
#define _GNU_SOURCE
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <sched.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#define errExit(msg) do { perror(msg); exit(EXIT_FAILURE); \
} while (0)
int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
int fd;
if (argc < 3) {
fprintf(stderr, "%s /proc/PID/ns/FILE cmd args...\n", argv[0]);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
fd = open(argv[1], O_RDONLY); /* Get descriptor for namespace */
if (fd == -1)
errExit("open");
if (setns(fd, 0) == -1) /* Join that namespace */
errExit("setns");
execvp(argv[2], &argv[2]); /* Execute a command in namespace */
errExit("execvp");
}