Re: allowing for a completely cached umount(2) pathwalk

[Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>]

On Fri, Apr 14, 2023 at 04:06:03AM +0000, Trond Myklebust wrote:
> 
> 
> > On Apr 13, 2023, at 23:51, Al Viro <viro@ZenIV.linux.org.uk> wrote:
> > 
> > On Fri, Apr 14, 2023 at 03:28:45AM +0000, Trond Myklebust wrote:
> > 
> >> We already have support for directory file descriptors when mounting with move_mount(). Why not add a umountat() with similar support for the unmount side?
> >> Then add a syscall to allow users with (e.g.) the CAP_DAC_OVERRIDE privilege to convert the mount-id into an O_PATH file descriptor.
> > 
> > You can already do umount -l /proc/self/fd/69 if you have a descriptor.
> > Converting mount-id to O_PATH... might be an interesting idea.
> 
> A dedicated umountat() might avoid the need for the lazy flag, if it were allowed to close the descriptor on success for the special case of an empty path.

No.  It's a wrong abstraction layer, anyway - "close the descriptor"
!= "make the opened file close", nevermind that it's a very odd
corner case that will cause a lot of headache down the road.