Re: fadvise syscall?

Andrew Morton
2002-03-18T19:02:51Z

Richard Gooch wrote:
>
> Andrew Morton writes:
> > Note that it applies to a file descriptor. If
> > posix_fadvise(FADV_DONTNEED) is called against a file descriptor,
> > and someone else has an fd open against the same file, that other
> > user gets their foot shot off. That's OK.
>
> Let me verify that I understand what you're saying. Process A and B
> independently open the file. The file is already in the cache (because
> other processes regularly read this file). Process A is slowly reading
> stuff. Process B does FADV_DONTNEED on the whole file. The pages are
> dropped.
>
> You're saying this is OK? How about this DoS attack:
> int fd = open ("/lib/libc.so", O_RDONLY, 0);
> while (1) {
> posix_fadvise (fd, 0, 0, FADVISE_DONTNEED);
> sleep (1);
> }
>
> Let me see that disc head move! Wheeee!
>

POSIX_FADV_DONTNEED could only unmap pages from the caller's
VMA's, so the problem would only affect other processes which
share the same mm - CLONE_MM threads.

If some other process has a reference on the pages then they
wouldn't get unmapped as a result of this. It's the same
as madvise(MADV_DONTNEED).

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