Re: linux-3.14 nfsd regression

Jeff Layton
2014-04-03T18:55:25Z

On Thu, 03 Apr 2014 13:51:06 -0400
Mark Lord <mlord@pobox.com> wrote:

> On 14-04-03 01:16 PM, J. Bruce Fields wrote:
> > On Thu, Apr 03, 2014 at 12:33:55PM -0400, Mark Lord wrote:
> >> This commit from linux-3.14 breaks our NFS-root clients here:
> >>
> >> https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=6e14b46b91fee8a049b0940333ce13a820beaaa5
> >>
> >>
> >> - *p++ = htonl((u32) stat->mode);
> >> + *p++ = htonl((u32) (stat->mode & S_IALLUGO));
> >>
> >>
> >> Reverting the one-liner above (on the server) fixes it for us,
> >> as does reverting back to linux-3.13.8 on the server.
> >>
> >> The NFS-root clients are on PowerPC (big-endian) architecture,
> >> running linux-3.12.16. The NFS server is on an Intel PC running linux-3.14.
> >>
> >> ACL is completely disabled on server and client,
> >> and we're using NFSv2/v3. No support for v4.
> >>
> >> I instrumented the function to see what other bits were being cleared
> >> by the (stat->mode & S_IALLUGO) masking. The results are attached.
> >
> > Hm, it sounds like a bug in the client if it's depending on those high
> > bits.
>
> But only for mounting / starting up from the nfsroot, it seems.
> I wonder if there's an unusual code path for that in there?
> The regular stuff looks mostly fine:
>
> p = xdr_decode_ftype3(p, &fmode);
> fattr->mode = (be32_to_cpup(p++) & ~S_IFMT) | fmode;
>
> Except perhaps that second line ought to use the same mask
> as the server side is using, just in case there are some other
> stray high (higher than S_IFMT) bits in there now/someday.
>
> > The original behavior was in practice harmless and changing it broke
> > something, so I think we should definitely just revert this patch.
>
> Yup. Who?
>
> > But the client may need fixing too.
>
> Probably a good thing in the longer term, for better compatibility
> with non-Linux servers. But we'll still have to keep the revert
> on the server (nfsd) code for backward compatibility, I think.
>
> Cheers
>

It would be good to understand where this is broken in the client.

It's incorrect for the client to interpret those bits, as I think that
there's no guarantee that other OS's implement the type bits in the
same way that Linux does. So if you end up mounting a different OS,
it's possible that the client will get that wrong...

--
Jeff Layton <jlayton@redhat.com>