Re: [PATCH v2 2/3] tun: Pad virtio header with zero

Willem de Bruijn
2025-01-10T11:32:39Z

Akihiko Odaki wrote:
> On 2025/01/10 17:33, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> > On Fri, Jan 10, 2025 at 01:38:06PM +0900, Akihiko Odaki wrote:
> >> On 2025/01/09 21:46, Willem de Bruijn wrote:
> >>> Akihiko Odaki wrote:
> >>>> On 2025/01/09 16:31, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> >>>>> On Thu, Jan 09, 2025 at 03:58:44PM +0900, Akihiko Odaki wrote:
> >>>>>> tun used to simply advance iov_iter when it needs to pad virtio header,
> >>>>>> which leaves the garbage in the buffer as is. This is especially
> >>>>>> problematic when tun starts to allow enabling the hash reporting
> >>>>>> feature; even if the feature is enabled, the packet may lack a hash
> >>>>>> value and may contain a hole in the virtio header because the packet
> >>>>>> arrived before the feature gets enabled or does not contain the
> >>>>>> header fields to be hashed. If the hole is not filled with zero, it is
> >>>>>> impossible to tell if the packet lacks a hash value.
> >>>
> >>> Zero is a valid hash value, so cannot be used as an indication that
> >>> hashing is inactive.
> >>
> >> Zeroing will initialize the hash_report field to
> >> VIRTIO_NET_HASH_REPORT_NONE, which tells it does not have a hash value.
> >>
> >>>
> >>>>>> In theory, a user of tun can fill the buffer with zero before calling
> >>>>>> read() to avoid such a problem, but leaving the garbage in the buffer is
> >>>>>> awkward anyway so fill the buffer in tun.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Signed-off-by: Akihiko Odaki <akihiko.odaki@daynix.com>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> But if the user did it, you have just overwritten his value,
> >>>>> did you not?
> >>>>
> >>>> Yes. but that means the user expects some part of buffer is not filled
> >>>> after read() or recvmsg(). I'm a bit worried that not filling the buffer
> >>>> may break assumptions others (especially the filesystem and socket
> >>>> infrastructures in the kernel) may have.
> >>>
> >>> If this is user memory that is ignored by the kernel, just reflected
> >>> back, then there is no need in general to zero it. There are many such
> >>> instances, also in msg_control.
> >>
> >> More specifically, is there any instance of recvmsg() implementation which
> >> returns N and does not fill the complete N bytes of msg_iter?
> >
> > The one in tun. It was a silly idea but it has been here for years now.
>
> Except tun. If there is such an example of recvmsg() implementation and
> it is not accidental and people have agreed to keep it functioning, we
> can confidently say this construct is safe without fearing pushback from
> people maintaining filesystem/networking infrastructure. Ultimately I
> want those people decide if this can be supported for the future or not.

It seems preferable to write a value.

Userspace should have not assumption that whatever it writes there
will be reflected unmodified. That said, that is the tiny risk of
changing this in established code.

If it worked without issue so far, without hashing, then probably the
change should only go to net-next.

As said, there are examples in msg_control. I don't immediately have
an example where this is the case in msg_data today. A search for
iov_iter_advance might show something.