[PATCH v5 2/8] man/man2/fspick.2: document "new" mount API

Aleksa Sarai
2025-09-24T15:32:08Z

This is loosely based on the original documentation written by David
Howells and later maintained by Christian Brauner, but has been
rewritten to be more from a user perspective (as well as fixing a few
critical mistakes).

Co-authored-by: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
Co-authored-by: Christian Brauner <brauner@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner <brauner@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Aleksa Sarai <cyphar@cyphar.com>
---
man/man2/fspick.2 | 343 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1 file changed, 343 insertions(+)

diff --git a/man/man2/fspick.2 b/man/man2/fspick.2
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..800aed81d38384be4563f2558e3cef846d7e7cee
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@@ -0,0 +1,343 @@
+.\" Copyright, the authors of the Linux man-pages project
+.\"
+.\" SPDX-License-Identifier: Linux-man-pages-copyleft
+.\"
+.TH fspick 2 (date) "Linux man-pages (unreleased)"
+.SH NAME
+fspick \- select filesystem for reconfiguration
+.SH LIBRARY
+Standard C library
+.RI ( libc ,\~ \-lc )
+.SH SYNOPSIS
+.nf
+.BR "#include <fcntl.h>" " /* Definition of " AT_* " constants */"
+.B #include <sys/mount.h>
+.P
+.BI "int fspick(int " dirfd ", const char *" path ", unsigned int " flags );
+.fi
+.SH DESCRIPTION
+The
+.BR fspick ()
+system call is part of
+the suite of file-descriptor-based mount facilities in Linux.
+.P
+.BR fspick ()
+creates a new filesystem configuration context
+for the extant filesystem instance
+associated with the path described by
+.I dirfd
+and
+.IR path ,
+places it into reconfiguration mode
+(similar to
+.BR mount (8)
+with the
+.I \-o\~remount
+option).
+A new file descriptor
+associated with the filesystem configuration context
+is then returned.
+The calling process must have the
+.B \%CAP_SYS_ADMIN
+capability in order to create a new filesystem configuration context.
+.P
+The resultant file descriptor can be used with
+.BR fsconfig (2)
+to specify the desired set of changes to
+filesystem parameters of the filesystem instance.
+Once the desired set of changes have been configured,
+the changes can be effectuated by calling
+.BR fsconfig (2)
+with the
+.B \%FSCONFIG_CMD_RECONFIGURE
+command.
+In contrast to
+the behaviour of
+.B MS_REMOUNT
+with
+.BR mount (2),
+.BR fspick ()
+instantiates the filesystem configuration context
+with a copy of
+the extant filesystem's filesystem parameters;
+thus,
+subsequent
+.B \%FSCONFIG_CMD_RECONFIGURE
+operations
+will only update filesystem parameters
+explicitly modified with
+.BR fsconfig (2).
+.P
+As with "*at()" system calls,
+.BR fspick ()
+uses the
+.I dirfd
+argument in conjunction with the
+.I path
+argument to determine the path to operate on, as follows:
+.IP \[bu] 3
+If the pathname given in
+.I path
+is absolute, then
+.I dirfd
+is ignored.
+.IP \[bu]
+If the pathname given in
+.I path
+is relative and
+.I dirfd
+is the special value
+.BR \%AT_FDCWD ,
+then
+.I path
+is interpreted relative to
+the current working directory
+of the calling process (like
+.BR open (2)).
+.IP \[bu]
+If the pathname given in
+.I path
+is relative,
+then it is interpreted relative to
+the directory referred to by the file descriptor
+.I dirfd
+(rather than relative to
+the current working directory
+of the calling process,
+as is done by
+.BR open (2)
+for a relative pathname).
+In this case,
+.I dirfd
+must be a directory
+that was opened for reading
+.RB ( O_RDONLY )
+or using the
+.B O_PATH
+flag.
+.IP \[bu]
+If
+.I path
+is an empty string,
+and
+.I flags
+contains
+.BR \%FSPICK_EMPTY_PATH ,
+then the file descriptor
+.I dirfd
+is operated on directly.
+In this case,
+.I dirfd
+may refer to any type of file,
+not just a directory.
+.P
+See
+.BR openat (2)
+for an explanation of why the
+.I dirfd
+argument is useful.
+.P
+.I flags
+can be used to control aspects of how
+.I path
+is resolved and
+properties of the returned file descriptor.
+A value for
+.I flags
+is constructed by bitwise ORing
+zero or more of the following constants:
+.RS
+.TP
+.B FSPICK_CLOEXEC
+Set the close-on-exec
+.RB ( FD_CLOEXEC )
+flag on the new file descriptor.
+See the description of the
+.B O_CLOEXEC
+flag in
+.BR open (2)
+for reasons why this may be useful.
+.TP
+.B FSPICK_EMPTY_PATH
+If
+.I path
+is an empty string,
+operate on the file referred to by
+.I dirfd
+(which may have been obtained from
+.BR open (2),
+.BR fsmount (2),
+or
+.BR open_tree (2)).
+In this case,
+.I dirfd
+may refer to any type of file,
+not just a directory.
+If
+.I dirfd
+is
+.BR \%AT_FDCWD ,
+.BR fspick ()
+will operate on the current working directory
+of the calling process.
+.TP
+.B FSPICK_SYMLINK_NOFOLLOW
+Do not follow symbolic links
+in the terminal component of
+.IR path .
+If
+.I path
+references a symbolic link,
+the returned filesystem context will reference
+the filesystem that the symbolic link itself resides on.
+.TP
+.B FSPICK_NO_AUTOMOUNT
+Do not automount the terminal ("basename") component of
+.I path
+if it is a directory that is an automount point.
+This allows you to reconfigure an automount point,
+rather than the location that would be mounted.
+This flag has no effect
+if the automount point has already been mounted over.
+.RE
+.P
+As with filesystem contexts created with
+.BR fsopen (2),
+the file descriptor returned by
+.BR fspick ()
+may be queried for message strings at any time by calling
+.BR read (2)
+on the file descriptor.
+(See the "Message retrieval interface" subsection in
+.BR fsopen (2)
+for more details on the message format.)
+.SH RETURN VALUE
+On success, a new file descriptor is returned.
+On error, \-1 is returned, and
+.I errno
+is set to indicate the error.
+.SH ERRORS
+.TP
+.B EACCES
+Search permission is denied
+for one of the directories
+in the path prefix of
+.IR path .
+(See also
+.BR path_resolution (7).)
+.TP
+.B EBADF
+.I path
+is relative but
+.I dirfd
+is neither
+.B \%AT_FDCWD
+nor a valid file descriptor.
+.TP
+.B EFAULT
+.I path
+is NULL
+or a pointer to a location
+outside the calling process's accessible address space.
+.TP
+.B EINVAL
+Invalid flag specified in
+.IR flags .
+.TP
+.B ELOOP
+Too many symbolic links encountered when resolving
+.IR path .
+.TP
+.B EMFILE
+The calling process has too many open files to create more.
+.TP
+.B ENAMETOOLONG
+.I path
+is longer than
+.BR PATH_MAX .
+.TP
+.B ENFILE
+The system has too many open files to create more.
+.TP
+.B ENOENT
+A component of
+.I path
+does not exist,
+or is a dangling symbolic link.
+.TP
+.B ENOENT
+.I path
+is an empty string, but
+.B \%FSPICK_EMPTY_PATH
+is not specified in
+.IR flags .
+.TP
+.B ENOTDIR
+A component of the path prefix of
+.I path
+is not a directory;
+or
+.I path
+is relative and
+.I dirfd
+is a file descriptor referring to a file other than a directory.
+.TP
+.B ENOMEM
+The kernel could not allocate sufficient memory to complete the operation.
+.TP
+.B EPERM
+The calling process does not have the required
+.B \%CAP_SYS_ADMIN
+capability.
+.SH STANDARDS
+Linux.
+.SH HISTORY
+Linux 5.2.
+.\" commit cf3cba4a429be43e5527a3f78859b1bfd9ebc5fb
+.\" commit 400913252d09f9cfb8cce33daee43167921fc343
+glibc 2.36.
+.SH EXAMPLES
+The following example sets the read-only flag
+on the filesystem instance referenced by
+the mount object attached at
+.IR /tmp .
+.P
+.in +4n
+.EX
+int fsfd = fspick(AT_FDCWD, "/tmp", FSPICK_CLOEXEC);
+fsconfig(fsfd, FSCONFIG_SET_FLAG, "ro", NULL, 0);
+fsconfig(fsfd, FSCONFIG_CMD_RECONFIGURE, NULL, NULL, 0);
+.EE
+.in
+.P
+The above procedure is roughly equivalent to
+the following mount operation using
+.BR mount (2):
+.P
+.in +4n
+.EX
+mount(NULL, "/tmp", NULL, MS_REMOUNT | MS_RDONLY, NULL);
+.EE
+.in
+.P
+With the notable caveat that
+in this example,
+.BR mount (2)
+will clear all other filesystem parameters
+(such as
+.B MS_DIRSYNC
+or
+.BR MS_SYNCHRONOUS );
+.BR fsconfig (2)
+will only modify the
+.I ro
+parameter.
+.SH SEE ALSO
+.BR fsconfig (2),
+.BR fsmount (2),
+.BR fsopen (2),
+.BR mount (2),
+.BR mount_setattr (2),
+.BR move_mount (2),
+.BR open_tree (2),
+.BR mount_namespaces (7)

--
2.51.0