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

Jeff Layton
2019-04-28T12:10:29Z

On Sat, 2019-04-27 at 16:16 -0400, Amir Goldstein wrote:
> [adding back samba/nfs and fsdevel]
>

cc'ing Pavel too -- he did a bunch of work in this area a few years ago.

> 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?....
>

As you said in another mail, the main interest here is in getting
NFS+SMB semantics right. If the exported filesystem is _only_ available
via NFS+SMB, then do we need to deny non-cooperative opens?

> > 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.
>

That would work, if the goal is to have deny modes affect all opens. We
could also do this on the opt-in basis that I was suggesting with a new
set of counters in struct file_lock_context.

> 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.
>

I don't think that will work at all. Share/deny modes are entirely
orthogonal to byte-range locks in both NFS and SMB. Consider:

Two clients open a file with O_RDWR | | O_SHARE_WRITE | O_SHARE_READ.
One of them now wants to set byte-range write lock on the file. That
should be allowed, but now it'll be denied, because the other client
will effectively hold a whole-file readlock on it.

There is also the problem that read and write deny modes are orthogonal
to one other, so you have to have a way to deal with them independently.

I'd suggest an API like this:

// open read/write and deny read/write
fd = open(..., O_RDWR | O_DENY_READ | O_DENY_WRITE);
// test for flags with F_GETFL
flags = fcntl(fd, F_GETFL);

That would also allow you to use F_SETFL to change those flags on an
existing fd.

> > 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.

Having the kernel allow setting deny modes on any open call is a non-
starter, for the reasons Bruce outlined earlier. This _must_ be
restricted in some fashion or we'll be opening up a ginormous DoS
mechanism.

My proposal was to make this only be enforced by applications that
explicitly opt-in by setting O_SH*/O_EX* flags. It wouldn't be too
difficult to also allow them to be enforced on a per-fs basis via mount
option or something. Maybe we could expand the meaning of '-o mand' ?

How would you propose that we restrict this?

> > 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).

That works for me.

We should probably have a close look at the work that Pavel did several
years ago too. It has almost certainly bitrotted by now, but it may
serve as a starting point (and he may he may have valuable input here).
--
Jeff Layton <jlayton@kernel.org>