Re: [PATCH v2] btrfs-progs: filesystem: du: skip file that permission denied

[Nikolay Borisov <nborisov@suse.com>]

On 22.11.21 г. 11:53, Graham Cobb wrote:
> 
> On 22/11/2021 09:32, Nikolay Borisov wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 22.11.21 г. 10:32, Sidong Yang wrote:
>>> On Mon, Nov 22, 2021 at 09:20:00AM +0200, Nikolay Borisov wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 21.11.21 г. 17:15, Sidong Yang wrote:
>>>>> This patch handles issue #421. Filesystem du command fails and exit
>>>>> when it access file that has permission denied. But it can continue the
>>>>> command except the files. This patch recovers ret value when permission
>>>>> denied.
>>>>>
>>>>> Signed-off-by: Sidong Yang <realwakka@gmail.com>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The code itself is fine so :
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Reviewed-by: Nikolay Borisov <nborisov@suse.com>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> OTOH when I looked at the code rather than just the patch I can't help
>>>> but wonder shouldn't we actually structure this the way you initially
>>>> proposed but also add a debug output along the lines of "skipping
>>>> file/dir XXXX due to permission denied", otherwise users might not be
>>>> able to account for some space and they can possibly wonder that
>>>> something is wrong with btrfs fi du command.
>>>
>>> You mean that it would be better that print some debug message than
>>> skipping silently. I agree. So I would add this code in condition.
>>>
>>> fprintf(stderr, "skipping file/dir: %s : %m\n", entry->d_name);
>>>
>>> I think it's okay that it prints when ENOTTY occurs. Is this code what
>>> you meant?
>>
>>
>> I meant to print only if we have EACCESS, but now that I think about it,
>> printing something when we have a non-fatal error and simply skipping
>> some dirs/files makes sense. OTOH printing it by default might be too
>> verbose so perhaps usuing a pr_verbose call would be more appropriate.
>>
>> This is one of those things which don't have a clear-cut answers so it's
>> useful to get as many perspective as possible to arrive at some workable
>> solution to a wider number of people.
> 
> I must admit I just assumed it worked the same way as /bin/du. I have
> just created an inaccessible directory and got:
> 
> $ du -sh ~
> du: cannot read directory '/home/cobb/permtest': Permission denied
> 61G	/home/cobb
> 
> And when the directory was accessible but the file in it was not, I got:
> 
> $ du -sh ~
> du: cannot access '/home/cobb/permtest/file': Permission denied
> 61G	/home/cobb
> 
> In other words, I think any error should be printed but the error is
> then skipped and the du continues. No need to tell people the file is
> being skipped - that is obvious. But the error must be printed by
> default (if there are really cases where the error should not be printed
> but reasons not to redirect stderr to /dev/null then add an option to
> suppress printing it).
> 
> Just my opinion.


That actually works for me, I'd rather btrfs be as consistent as
possible and not give surprises to users. So just mimicking what an
omnipresent tool does is as good as it gets :)


> 
> Graham
>