Re: Better interop for NFS/SMB file share mode/reservation

Amir Goldstein
2019-04-27T20:16:56Z

[adding back samba/nfs and fsdevel]

On Fri, Apr 26, 2019 at 6:22 PM Jeff Layton <jlayton@kernel.org> wrote:
>
> On Fri, 2019-04-26 at 10:50 -0400, J. Bruce Fields wrote:
> > On Fri, Apr 26, 2019 at 04:11:00PM +0200, Amir Goldstein wrote:
> > > On Fri, Apr 26, 2019, 4:00 PM J. Bruce Fields <bfields@fieldses.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > > On Fri, Apr 26, 2019 at 03:50:46PM +0200, Amir Goldstein wrote:
> > > > > On Fri, Feb 8, 2019, 5:03 PM Jeff Layton <jlayton@kernel.org> wrote:
> > > > > > Share/deny open semantics are pretty similar across NFS and SMB (by
> > > > > > design, really). If you intend to solve that use-case, what you really
> > > > > > want is whole-file, shared/exclusive locks that are set atomically with
> > > > > > the open call. O_EXLOCK and O_SHLOCK seem like a reasonable fit there.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Then you could have SMB and NFS servers set these flags when opening
> > > > > > files, and deal with the occasional denial at open time. Other
> > > > > > applications won't be aware of them of course, but that's probably fine
> > > > > > for most use-cases where you want this sort of protocol interop.
> > > > >
> > > > > Sorry for posting off list. Airport emails...
> > > > > I looked at implemeting O_EXLOCK and O_SHLOCK and it looks doable.
> > > > >
> > > > > I was wondering if there is an inherent reason not to allow an exclusive
> > > > > lock on a file that is open read-only.
> > > > >
> > > > > Samba seems to need it and currently flock and ofd locks won't allow it.
> > > > > Do you thing it will be ok to allow it with O_EXLOCK?
> > > >
> > > > Somebody could deny everyone access to a shared resource that everyone
> > > > needs to make progress, like /etc/passwd or a shared library.
> > > >
> > > > Have you looked at Pavel Shilovsky's O_DENY patches? He had the feature
> > > > off by default, with a mount option provided to turn it on.
> > > >
> > >
> > > O_EXLOCK is advisory. It only aquired flock or ofd lock atomically with
> > > open.
> >
> > Whoops, got it.
> >
> > Is that really adequate for open share locks, though?
> >
> > I assumed that Windows apps depend on the assumption that they're
> > mandatory. So e.g. if you can get a DENY_READ open on a shared library
> > then you know you can update it without the risk of making someone else
> > crash.
> >
>
> I think this is (slightly) better than doing it internally like we do
> today and would give you coherent locking between NFS and SMB. Other
> applications wouldn't see them, but for a NAS-style deployment, that's
> probably ok.
>

We can do a little bit better.
We can make sure that O_DENY_WRITE (named for convenience) fails
if file is currently open for write by anyone and similarly for O_DENY_READ.
But if we cannot deny future non-cooperative opens what's the point?....

> Any open by samba or nfsd would need to start setting O_SHLOCK, and deny
> mode opens would have to set O_EXLOCK. We would actually need 2 per
> inode though (one for read and one for write).
>

...the point is that O_DENY_NONE does not need to be implemented with
a new type of lock object (O_WR_SHLOCK) its enough that it checks there
are no relevant exclusive locks and the then inode->i_writecount and
inode->i_readcount already provide enough context to cooperate with
O_DENY_WRITE and O_DENY_READ.

I need to see if incrementing inode->i_readcount on O_RDWR opens is
possible (right now it only counts O_RDONLY opens).

> I think these should probably be in their own "namespace" too. They
> could use the same semantics as flock, but should sit on their own list
> in file_lock_context.
>

I would much rather that they didn't. The reason is that new open flags
are a backward compat problem. The way I want to solve it is this API:

// On new kernel this will acquire OFD F_WRLCK atomically...
fd = open(..., O_RDWR | O_EXLOCK);
// ...check if it did acquire OFD lock
fcntl(fd, F_OFD_GETLK, ...);

We'd need at least one new l_type F_EX_RDLCK and maybe also a new
semantic F_EX_RDWRLCK, although similar in conflicts to F_WRLCK it can be
acquired without FMODE_WRITE. Though I personally thing we can do without
it if the only way to acquire F_WRLCK on readonly file is via new open flag.

> That said, we could also look at a vfs-level mount option that would
> make the kernel enforce these for any opener. That could also be useful,
> and shouldn't be too hard to implement. Maybe even make it a vfsmount-
> level option (like -o ro is).
>

Yeh, I am humbly going to leave this struggle to someone else.
Not important enough IMO and completely independent effort to the
advisory atomic open&lock API.

> If you're denied, what error should you get back when you try to open
> it? It should be something distinct. We may even want to add new error
> codes for this.

IMO EBUSY does the job. Its distinct because open is not expected
to return EBUSY for regular files/dirs and when open is expected to
return EBUSY for blockdev its for the exact same use case (i.e.
exclusive write open is acquired by userspace tools).

Thanks,
Amir.