CSI Driver fsGroup Support

There are two features related to supporting fsGroup for the CSI driver: CSI volume fsGroup policy and delegating fsGroup to CSI driver. For more information about using fsGroup in Kubernetes, please refer to the Kubernetes documentation on Pod security context.

CSI Volume fsGroup Policy

Status

StatusMin K8s VersionMax K8s Version
Alpha1.191.19
Beta1.201.22
GA1.23-

Overview

CSI Drivers can indicate whether or not they support modifying a volume's ownership or permissions when the volume is being mounted. This can be useful if the CSI Driver does not support the operation, or wishes to re-use volumes with constantly changing permissions.

See the design document for further information.

Example Usage

When creating the CSI Driver object, fsGroupPolicy is defined in the driver's spec. The following shows the hostpath driver with None included, indicating that the volumes should not be modified when mounted:

apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
kind: CSIDriver
metadata:
  name: hostpath.csi.k8s.io
spec:
  # Supports persistent and ephemeral inline volumes.
  volumeLifecycleModes:
  - Persistent
  - Ephemeral
  # To determine at runtime which mode a volume uses, pod info and its
  # "csi.storage.k8s.io/ephemeral" entry are needed.
  podInfoOnMount: true
  fsGroupPolicy: None

Supported Modes

  • The following modes are supported:
    • None: Indicates that volumes will be mounted with no modifications, as the CSI volume driver does not support these operations.
    • File: Indicates that the CSI volume driver supports volume ownership and permission change via fsGroup, and Kubernetes may use fsGroup to change permissions and ownership of the volume to match user requested fsGroup in the pod's SecurityPolicy regardless of fstype or access mode.
    • ReadWriteOnceWithFSType: Indicates that volumes will be examined to determine if volume ownership and permissions should be modified to match the pod's security policy. Changes will only occur if the fsType is defined and the persistent volume's accessModes contains ReadWriteOnce. .

If undefined, fsGroupPolicy will default to ReadWriteOnceWithFSType, keeping the previous behavior.

Feature Gates

To use this field, Kubernetes 1.19 binaries must start with the CSIVolumeFSGroupPolicy feature gate enabled:

--feature-gates=CSIVolumeFSGroupPolicy=true

This is enabled by default on 1.20 and higher.

Delegate fsGroup to CSI Driver

Status

StatusMin K8s VersionMax K8s Version
Alpha1.221.22
Beta1.23-
GA1.26-

Overview

For most drivers, kubelet applies the fsGroup specified in a Pod spec by recursively changing volume ownership during the mount process. This does not work for certain drivers. For example:

  • A driver requires passing fsGroup to mount options in order for it to take effect.
  • A driver needs to apply fsGroup at the stage step (NodeStageVolume in CSI; MountDevice in Kubernetes) instead of the mount step (NodePublishVolume in CSI; SetUp/SetUpAt in Kubernetes).

This feature provides a mechanism for the driver to apply fsGroup instead of kubelet. Specifically, it passes fsGroup to the CSI driver through NodeStageVolume and NodePublishVolume calls, and the kubelet fsGroup logic is disabled. The driver is expected to apply the fsGroup within one of these calls.

If this feature is enabled in Kubernetes and a volume uses a driver that supports this feature, CSIDriver.spec.fsGroupPolicy and Pod.spec.securityContext.fsGroupChangePolicy are ignored.

See the design document and the description of the VolumeCapability.MountVolume.volume_mount_group field in the CSI spec for further information.

Usage

The CSI driver must implement the VOLUME_MOUNT_GROUP node service capability. The Pod-specified fsGroup will be available in NodeStageVolumeRequest and NodePublishVolumeRequest via VolumeCapability.MountVolume.VolumeMountGroup.

Feature Gates

To use this field, Kubernetes 1.22 binaries must start with the DelegateFSGroupToCSIDriver feature gate enabled:

--feature-gates=DelegateFSGroupToCSIDriver=true

This is enabled by default on 1.23 and higher.