The existing method for handling legacy SAR is:
1. Mount /sbin tmpfs overlay
2. Dump all patched/new files into /sbin
3. Magic mount root dir and re-exec patched stock init
With Android 11 removing the /sbin folder, it is quite obvious that
things completely break down right in step 1.
To overcome this issue, we have to find a way to swap out the init
binary AFTER we re-exec stock init. This is where 2SI comes to rescue!
2SI normal boot procedure is:
1st stage -> Load sepolicy -> 2nd stage -> boot continue...
2SI Magisk boot procedure is:
MagiskInit 1st stage -> Stock 1st stage -> MagiskInit 2nd Stage ->
-> Stock init load sepolicy -> Stock 2nd stage -> boot continue...
As you can see, the trick is to make stock 1st stage init re-exec back
into MagiskInit so we can do our setup. This is possible by manipulating
some ramdisk files on initramfs based 2SI devices (old ass non SAR
devices AND super modern devices like Pixel 3/4), but not possible
on device that are stuck using legacy SAR (device that are not that
modern but not too old, like Pixel 1/2. Fucking Google logic!!)
This commit introduces a new way to intercept stock init re-exec flow:
ptrace init with forked tracer, monitor PTRACE_EVENT_EXEC, then swap
out the init file with bind mounts right before execv returns!
Going through this flow however will lose some necessary backup files,
so some bookkeeping has to be done by making the tracer hold these
files in memory and act as a daemon. 2nd stage MagiskInit will ack the
daemon to release these files at the correct time.
It just works™ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The way how logical partition, or "Logical Resizable Android Partitions"
as they say in AOSP source code, is setup makes it impossible to early
mount the partitions from the shared super partition with just
a few lines of code; in fact, AOSP has a whole "fs_mgr" folder which
consist of multiple complex libraries, with 15K lines of code just
to deal with the device mapper shenanigans.
In order to keep the already overly complicated MagiskInit more
managable, I chose NOT to go the route of including fs_mgr directly
into MagiskInit. Luckily, starting from Android Q, Google decided to
split init startup into 3 stages, with the first stage doing _only_
early mount. This is great news, because we can simply let the stock
init do its own thing for us, and we intercept the bootup sequence.
So the workflow can be visualized roughly below:
Magisk First Stage --> First Stage Mount --> Magisk Second Stage --+
(MagiskInit) (Original Init) (MagiskInit) +
+
+
...Rest of the boot... <-- Second Stage <-- Selinux Setup <--+
(__________________ Original Init ____________________)
The catch here is that after doing all the first stage mounting, /init
will pivot /system as root directory (/), leaving us impossible to
regain control after we hand it over. So the solution here is to patch
fstab in /first_stage_ramdisk on-the-fly to redirect /system to
/system_root, making the original init do all the hard work for
us and mount required early mount partitions, but skips the step of
switching root directory. It will also conveniently hand over execution
back to MagiskInit, which we will reuse the routine for patching
root directory in normal system-as-root situations.
The current system-as-root magiskinit implementation (converting
root directory in system partition to legacy rootfs setup) is now
considered as backwards compatible only.
The new implementation that is hide and Android Q friendly is coming soon.
