Re: [PATCH 00/17] VFS: Filesystem information and notifications [ver #17]

Al Viro
2020-03-06T19:58:35Z

On Fri, Mar 06, 2020 at 07:43:22PM +0000, Al Viro wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 06, 2020 at 05:25:49PM +0100, Miklos Szeredi wrote:
> > On Tue, Mar 03, 2020 at 08:46:09AM +0100, Miklos Szeredi wrote:
> > >
> > > I'm doing a patch. Let's see how it fares in the face of all these
> > > preconceptions.
> >
> > Here's a first cut. Doesn't yet have superblock info, just mount info.
> > Probably has rough edges, but appears to work.
>
> For starters, you have just made namespace_sem held over copy_to_user().
> This is not going to fly.

In case if the above is too terse: you grab your mutex while under
namespace_sem (see attach_recursive_mnt()); the same mutex is held
while calling dir_emit(). Which can (and normally does) copy data
to userland-supplied buffer.

NAK for that reason alone, and to be honest I had been too busy
suppressing the gag reflex to read and comment any deeper.

I really hate that approach, in case it's not clear from the above.
To the degree that I don't trust myself to filter out the obscenities
if I try to comment on it right now.

The only blocking thing we can afford under namespace_sem is GFP_KERNEL
allocation.