Re: [PATCH v2] vfs: prevent copy_file_range to copy across devices

Trond Myklebust
2021-02-15T18:58:37Z

On Mon, 2021-02-15 at 19:24 +0200, Amir Goldstein wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 15, 2021 at 6:53 PM Trond Myklebust <
> trondmy@hammerspace.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Mon, 2021-02-15 at 18:34 +0200, Amir Goldstein wrote:
> > > On Mon, Feb 15, 2021 at 5:42 PM Luis Henriques <
> > > lhenriques@suse.de>
> > > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Nicolas Boichat reported an issue when trying to use the
> > > > copy_file_range
> > > > syscall on a tracefs file.  It failed silently because the file
> > > > content is
> > > > generated on-the-fly (reporting a size of zero) and
> > > > copy_file_range
> > > > needs
> > > > to know in advance how much data is present.
> > > >
> > > > This commit restores the cross-fs restrictions that existed
> > > > prior
> > > > to
> > > > 5dae222a5ff0 ("vfs: allow copy_file_range to copy across
> > > > devices")
> > > > and
> > > > removes generic_copy_file_range() calls from ceph, cifs, fuse,
> > > > and
> > > > nfs.
> > > >
> > > > Fixes: 5dae222a5ff0 ("vfs: allow copy_file_range to copy across
> > > > devices")
> > > > Link:
> > > > https://lore.kernel.org/linux-fsdevel/20210212044405.4120619-1-drinkcat@chromium.org/
> > > > Cc: Nicolas Boichat <drinkcat@chromium.org>
> > > > Signed-off-by: Luis Henriques <lhenriques@suse.de>
> > >
> > > Code looks ok.
> > > You may add:
> > >
> > > Reviewed-by: Amir Goldstein <amir73il@gmail.com>
> > >
> > > I agree with Trond that the first paragraph of the commit message
> > > could
> > > be improved.
> > > The purpose of this change is to fix the change of behavior that
> > > caused the regression.
> > >
> > > Before v5.3, behavior was -EXDEV and userspace could fallback to
> > > read.
> > > After v5.3, behavior is zero size copy.
> > >
> > > It does not matter so much what makes sense for CFR to do in this
> > > case (generic cross-fs copy).  What matters is that nobody asked
> > > for
> > > this change and that it caused problems.
> > >
> >
> > No. I'm saying that this patch should be NACKed unless there is a
> > real
> > explanation for why we give crap about this tracefs corner case and
> > why
> > it can't be fixed.
> >
> > There are plenty of reasons why copy offload across filesystems
> > makes
> > sense, and particularly when you're doing NAS. Clone just doesn't
> > cut
> > it when it comes to disaster recovery (whereas backup to a
> > different
> > storage unit does). If the client has to do the copy, then you're
> > effectively doubling the load on the server, and you're adding
> > potentially unnecessary network traffic (or at the very least you
> > are
> > doubling that traffic).
> >
>
> I don't understand the use case you are describing.
>
> Which filesystem types are you talking about for source and target
> of copy_file_range()?
>
> To be clear, the original change was done to support NFS/CIFS server-
> side
> copy and those should not be affected by this change.
>

That is incorrect:

ssize_t nfsd_copy_file_range(struct file *src, u64 src_pos, struct file
*dst,
u64 dst_pos, u64 count)
{

/*
* Limit copy to 4MB to prevent indefinitely blocking an nfsd
* thread and client rpc slot. The choice of 4MB is somewhat
* arbitrary. We might instead base this on r/wsize, or make it
* tunable, or use a time instead of a byte limit, or implement
* asynchronous copy. In theory a client could also recognize a
* limit like this and pipeline multiple COPY requests.
*/
count = min_t(u64, count, 1 << 22);
return vfs_copy_file_range(src, src_pos, dst, dst_pos, count, 0);
}

You are now explicitly changing the behaviour of knfsd when the source
and destination filesystem differ.

For one thing, you are disallowing the NFSv4.2 copy offload use case of
copying from a local filesystem to a remote NFS server. However you are
also disallowing the copy from, say, an XFS formatted partition to an
ext4 partition.

--
Trond Myklebust
Linux NFS client maintainer, Hammerspace
trond.myklebust@hammerspace.com