3

I have been advised by a sysadmin guy I know, to run Apache in a chroot jail, for increased security.

I have the following questions:

  1. Is this advisable (i.e. are there any 'gotcha's that I need to be aware of) ?
  2. Does running Apache in a chroot jail affect its ability issues like performance and scalability?

He also advised that I run my databases (mySQL and PostgreSQL), in separate chroot jails.

Is this something that is often done in production systems

[Edit]

Forgot to say, Server is running on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS

1
  • You mention jails: are you on one of the *BSD's? If not, and you're on Linux, SELinux in enforcing mode will probably take care of all your security problems quite well.
    – wzzrd
    Jun 3, 2010 at 10:41

2 Answers 2

5

Chrooting is a good security measure, it limits the possibilities to compromise the system in case of a successfull exploit but there are also ways in some case to evade from a chroot, so it is not a definitive way to protect the system.

I'm not aware of any disavantage regarding performance and scalability. Concerning database access, it is generaly done with a link to the socket inside the chroot this way you don't have to open any networking port for database connectivity.

EDIT: below is a sample for mysql access taken from an OpenBSD rc.local (OpenBSD chrooted httpd)

if [ X"${mysql_server_flags-NO}" != X"NO" -a -x /usr/local/bin/mysqld_safe ]; then
        rm -R /var/www/var/run/mysql
        mkdir -p /var/www/var/run/mysql
        chown _mysql:_mysql   /var/www/var/run/mysql
        echo -n 'MySQL server: '; /usr/local/bin/mysqld_safe --user=_mysql ${mysql_server_flags} &
        sleep 10
        ln -f /var/run/mysql/mysql.sock /var/www/var/run/mysql/mysql.sock
fi

Hope this helps.

3
  • +1 for good, straight answer. could you please elaborate some more (i.e. explain) what you mean by 'link to the socket inside the chroot'. can you provide an example?
    – user35402
    Jun 3, 2010 at 8:39
  • Edited my answer.
    – Maxwell
    Jun 3, 2010 at 8:58
  • I heartily second the notion of running all DMZ apps in chroot jails. However, the DB backend is typically not in the DMZ, but on an internal network.
    – mpez0
    Jun 3, 2010 at 11:09
-2

I have two programs, one of them is apache httpd, communicating each other via unix domain socket. I have switched them to run under chroot, and then %10 performance loss. It depends on the running applications I think. I did not hear any performance loss for Apache under chroot before, so It looks like my second app is lost performance under chroot.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .