[PATCH] inotify: disallow watches on unsupported filesystems

Seyediman Seyedarab
2025-03-04T07:59:46Z

currently, inotify_add_watch() allows adding watches on filesystems
where inotify does not work correctly, without returning an explicit
error. This behavior is misleading and can cause confusion for users
expecting inotify to work on a certain filesystem.

This patch explicitly rejects inotify usage on filesystems where it
is known to be unreliable, such as sysfs, procfs, overlayfs, 9p, fuse,
and others.

By returning -EOPNOTSUPP, the limitation is made explicit, preventing
users from making incorrect assumptions about inotify behavior.

Signed-off-by: Seyediman Seyedarab <ImanDevel@gmail.com>
---
fs/notify/inotify/inotify_user.c | 22 ++++++++++++++++++++++
1 file changed, 22 insertions(+)

diff --git a/fs/notify/inotify/inotify_user.c b/fs/notify/inotify/inotify_user.c
index b372fb2c56bd..9b96438f4d46 100644
--- a/fs/notify/inotify/inotify_user.c
+++ b/fs/notify/inotify/inotify_user.c
@@ -87,6 +87,13 @@ static const struct ctl_table inotify_table[] = {
},
};

+static const unsigned long unwatchable_fs[] = {
+ PROC_SUPER_MAGIC, SYSFS_MAGIC, TRACEFS_MAGIC,
+ DEBUGFS_MAGIC, CGROUP_SUPER_MAGIC, SECURITYFS_MAGIC,
+ RAMFS_MAGIC, DEVPTS_SUPER_MAGIC, BPF_FS_MAGIC,
+ OVERLAYFS_SUPER_MAGIC, FUSE_SUPER_MAGIC, NFS_SUPER_MAGIC
+};
+
static void __init inotify_sysctls_init(void)
{
register_sysctl("fs/inotify", inotify_table);
@@ -690,6 +697,14 @@ static struct fsnotify_group *inotify_new_group(unsigned int max_events)
}

+static inline bool is_unwatchable_fs(struct inode *inode)
+{
+ for (int i = 0; i < ARRAY_SIZE(unwatchable_fs); i++)
+ if (inode->i_sb->s_magic == unwatchable_fs[i])
+ return true;
+ return false;
+}
+
/* inotify syscalls */
static int do_inotify_init(int flags)
{
@@ -777,6 +792,13 @@ SYSCALL_DEFINE3(inotify_add_watch, int, fd, const char __user *, pathname,
inode = path.dentry->d_inode;
group = fd_file(f)->private_data;

+ /* ensure that inotify is only used on supported filesystems */
+ if (is_unwatchable_fs(inode)) {
+ pr_debug("%s: inotify is not supported on filesystem with s_magic=0x%lx\n",
+ __func__, inode->i_sb->s_magic);
+ return -EOPNOTSUPP;
+ }
+
/* create/update an inode mark */
ret = inotify_update_watch(group, inode, mask);
path_put(&path);
--
2.48.1