Re: [RFC] unifying write variants for filesystems

[Kent Overstreet <kmo@daterainc.com>]

On Wed, Feb 05, 2014 at 07:58:38PM +0000, Al Viro wrote:
> 	BTW, why do we still have generic_segment_checks()?
> AFAICS, *all* paths leading to any ->aio_read/->aio_write
> instances are either
> 	1) with KERNEL_DS (and base/len are verifiably sane in those
> cases), or
> 	2) have iovec come from successful {compat,}rw_copy_check_uvector()
> and through rw_verify_area(), or
> 	3) have single-element iovec with access_ok()/rw_verify_area()
> checked directly, or
> 	4) have single-element iovec with base/len unchanged from
> what had been passed to some ->read() or ->write() instance, in which
> case the caller of that ->read() or ->write() has done access_ok/rw_verify_area
> 
> And yes, I can prove that for the current tree, modulo a couple of dumb
> bugs with unchecked values coming via read_code().  Which is called
> a couple of times per a.out execve() and should be using vfs_read() instead
> of blindly calling ->read() - it's *not* a hot path and never had been one.
> With that fixed, we have the following: and call of any instance of
> ->read()/->write()/->aio_read()/->aio_write() (be it direct or via method)
> is guaranteed that
> 	* all segments it's asked to read/write will satisfy access_ok().
> 	* all segments it's asked to read/write will have non-negative
> lengths.
> 	* total size of all segments will be at most MAX_RW_COUNT.
> 	* file offset won't go from negative to zero in the combined area;
> unless the file has FMODE_UNSIGNED_OFFSET in ->f_mode, it won't go from
> positive to negative either.
> 
> So what exactly does generic_segments_check() give us?  Is it just that
> everybody went "well, maybe there's some weird path where we don't do
> validation; let's leave it there"?  Linus?

I came to the same conclusion awhile ago - I'm pretty sure it can be
safely dropped (I think I even have such a patch in one of my
branches...)

Anyways, copy_check_uvector() is the correct place for all that stuff
anyways - it's taking a __user type and producing a type without the
__user attribute, so if there was any validation missing there that's
where it should go.

I vaguelly recall converting some SCSI related code to use
copy_check_uvector() instead of its own (open coded?) thing, if that
patch made it upstream that could've been a place that at one point in
time did need the generic_segment_checks() call.

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