[uml-devel] hostfs oddities

[uml-devel] hostfs oddities

[Ingo van Lil]

Hi there,

I noticed two little misfeatures in the hostfs file system. The first 
one is most certainly a bug, the second one might be functioning as 
intended.

1. If a file is held read-only by one process it cannot by creat()'ed by 
another one:

   [root@localhost ~]# mount -t hostfs none /mnt
   [root@localhost ~]# cd /mnt/tmp
   [root@localhost tmp]# touch foo
   [root@localhost tmp]# tail -f foo &
   [1] 895
   [root@localhost tmp]# > foo
   -bash: foo: Invalid argument
   [root@localhost tmp]# kill 895
   [1]+  Terminated              tail -f foo
   [root@localhost tmp]# > foo

I tracked that problem down to the set_attr() function in hostfs_user.c: 
It tries to ftruncate() the read-only file descriptor. The file should 
be re-opened writable before changing its length.

2. As long as a file is held open changes made outside the UML kernel 
(i.e. on the host side) may not be visible:

   [root@localhost tmp]# tail -f foo &
   [1] 897
   # Host system: echo "Hello World" > /tmp/foo
   [root@localhost tmp]# cat foo
   [root@localhost tmp]# kill 897
   [1]+  Terminated              tail -f foo
   [root@localhost tmp]# cat foo
   Hello World

I guess this is some kind of caching effect, because strace shows that 
there is only a single read to the actual physical file. Maybe hostfs 
should check whether the outside file has changed and invalidate the 
cache if necessary.

Cheers,
Ingo

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Re: [uml-devel] hostfs oddities

[Jeff Dike]

On Sat, Jul 05, 2008 at 08:46:31PM +0200, Ingo van Lil wrote:
> 1. If a file is held read-only by one process it cannot by creat()'ed by 
> another one:
> 
>    [root@localhost ~]# mount -t hostfs none /mnt
>    [root@localhost ~]# cd /mnt/tmp
>    [root@localhost tmp]# touch foo
>    [root@localhost tmp]# tail -f foo &
>    [1] 895
>    [root@localhost tmp]# > foo
>    -bash: foo: Invalid argument
>    [root@localhost tmp]# kill 895
>    [1]+  Terminated              tail -f foo
>    [root@localhost tmp]# > foo
> 
> I tracked that problem down to the set_attr() function in hostfs_user.c: 
> It tries to ftruncate() the read-only file descriptor. The file should 
> be re-opened writable before changing its length.

Looks like a good diagnosis.  There is code in host_file_open which is
supposed to handle this case, but it's not being hit when the shell
opens the file, which I don't understand.

> 2. As long as a file is held open changes made outside the UML kernel 
> (i.e. on the host side) may not be visible:
> 
>    [root@localhost tmp]# tail -f foo &
>    [1] 897
>    # Host system: echo "Hello World" > /tmp/foo
>    [root@localhost tmp]# cat foo
>    [root@localhost tmp]# kill 897
>    [1]+  Terminated              tail -f foo
>    [root@localhost tmp]# cat foo
>    Hello World
> 
> I guess this is some kind of caching effect, because strace shows that 
> there is only a single read to the actual physical file. Maybe hostfs 
> should check whether the outside file has changed and invalidate the 
> cache if necessary.

Correct.  I've pondered using [id]notify to track changes on the host
and either invalidate the UML cache or update it.  Both involve
interactions with the page cache that I'm not entirely comfortable
with right now.

				Jeff

-- 
Work email - jdike at linux dot intel dot com

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Re: [uml-devel] hostfs oddities

[Ingo van Lil]

Jeff Dike wrote:

>> 1. If a file is held read-only by one process it cannot by creat()'ed by 
>> another one:
>>
[...]
>>
>> I tracked that problem down to the set_attr() function in hostfs_user.c: 
>> It tries to ftruncate() the read-only file descriptor. The file should 
>> be re-opened writable before changing its length.
> 
> Looks like a good diagnosis.  There is code in host_file_open which is
> supposed to handle this case, but it's not being hit when the shell
> opens the file, which I don't understand.

I tracked that down step-by-step on Saturday: If the O_TRUNC flag is set 
in the open() syscall the file will first be truncated and then opened.

The call stack for truncating the file:

  - sys_open (fs/open.c)
  - do_sys_open (fs/open.c)
  - do_filp_open (fs/open.c)
  - open_namei (fs/namei.c)
  - may_open (fs/namei.c)
  - do_truncate (fs/open.c)

And the call stack for actually opening the file:

  - sys_open (fs/open.c)
  - do_sys_open (fs/open.c)
  - do_filp_open (fs/open.c)
  - nameidata_to_filp (fs/open.c)
  - __dentry_open (fs/open.c)

Maybe that helps.


> Correct.  I've pondered using [id]notify to track changes on the host
> and either invalidate the UML cache or update it.  Both involve
> interactions with the page cache that I'm not entirely comfortable
> with right now.

That problem is actually more severe for my UML use case: I'm developing 
firmware for an embedded device, and I'm using UML because it's quicker 
and more convenient than developing on the target hardware. Now, if I 
re-compile some library which is still in use by another process the 
changes will not be visible until I reboot (or kill these background 
processes).
How do similar filesystems (e.g. NFS) solve that problem?

Cheers,
Ingo


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Re: [uml-devel] hostfs oddities

[Jeff Dike]

On Tue, Jul 08, 2008 at 04:15:00PM +0200, Ingo van Lil wrote:
> The call stack for truncating the file:
> 
>   - sys_open (fs/open.c)
>   - do_sys_open (fs/open.c)
>   - do_filp_open (fs/open.c)
>   - open_namei (fs/namei.c)
>   - may_open (fs/namei.c)
>   - do_truncate (fs/open.c)
> 
> And the call stack for actually opening the file:
> 
>   - sys_open (fs/open.c)
>   - do_sys_open (fs/open.c)
>   - do_filp_open (fs/open.c)
>   - nameidata_to_filp (fs/open.c)
>   - __dentry_open (fs/open.c)
> 
> Maybe that helps.

Yeah, I was suspecting that something was causing operations on the
file before hostfs was asked to actually open it.  Hmm.

     	    	       Jeff

-- 
Work email - jdike at linux dot intel dot com

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Re: [uml-devel] hostfs oddities

[Ingo van Lil]

Jeff Dike schrieb:

>> I guess this is some kind of caching effect, because strace shows that 
>> there is only a single read to the actual physical file. Maybe hostfs 
>> should check whether the outside file has changed and invalidate the 
>> cache if necessary.
> 
> Correct.  I've pondered using [id]notify to track changes on the host
> and either invalidate the UML cache or update it.  Both involve
> interactions with the page cache that I'm not entirely comfortable
> with right now.

I gave all this a little more thought: The ideal solution would be to 
somehow share the host's page cache for that file. That way concurrent 
read and write accesses on both sides would be automatically 
synchronized, just as when multiple regular processes access the same 
file. I guess that's not easily possible, is it?

If it turns out we have to invalidate the cache whenever the file is 
changed on the host side it looks like invalidate_inode_pages2() is the 
function to use: If I modify the aio_read in hostfs_kern.c to call this 
function on iocb->ki_filp->f_mapping before every read changes made on 
the host become immediately visible on the guest. This is also what nfs 
seems to do.

Regards,
Ingo

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Re: [uml-devel] hostfs oddities

[Jeff Dike]

On Wed, Jul 09, 2008 at 09:43:42PM +0200, Ingo van Lil wrote:
> I gave all this a little more thought: The ideal solution would be to 
> somehow share the host's page cache for that file. That way concurrent 
> read and write accesses on both sides would be automatically 
> synchronized, just as when multiple regular processes access the same 
> file. I guess that's not easily possible, is it?

It is possible.  mappng pages from the host into the UML page cache
will do that.  Adding mmap support to UML is possible, just there
hasn't been a lot of demand for it.

       	      	     Jeff

-- 
Work email - jdike at linux dot intel dot com

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