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From: hengyul@cs.unc.edu
To: brauner@kernel.org, viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk
Cc: jack@suse.cz, joe@dama.to, jirislaby@kernel.org, sdf@fomichev.me,
	edumazet@google.com, kuba@kernel.org, davem@davemloft.net,
	pabeni@redhat.com, horms@kernel.org, shuah@kernel.org,
	linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, netdev@vger.kernel.org,
	linux-kselftest@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
	Hengyu Liang <hengyul@cs.unc.edu>
Subject: [PATCH] eventpoll: return -ENOIOCTLCMD for unknown ioctl commands
Date: Thu, 24 Sep 2026 14:57:47 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20260924185747.2166326-1-hengyul@cs.unc.edu> (raw)

From: Hengyu Liang <hengyul@cs.unc.edu>

Before commit 18e2bf0edf4d ("eventpoll: Add epoll ioctl for
epoll_params"), epoll files had no ioctl handler, so ioctl() on an epoll
file descriptor failed with ENOTTY. That commit introduced the
EPIOCSPARAMS and EPIOCGPARAMS commands, but ep_eventpoll_ioctl() returns
-EINVAL for any other command, so since v6.9 every other ioctl() on an
epoll file descriptor fails with EINVAL instead of ENOTTY.

Documentation/driver-api/ioctl.rst says that an ioctl handler must
return -ENOTTY or -ENOIOCTLCMD for an unknown command, and that
returning -EINVAL there is wrong. Returning -ENOIOCTLCMD was also the
intent of the original series, whose changelog since v3 [1] says "when
an unknown ioctl is received, -ENOIOCTLCMD is returned instead of
-EINVAL as the ioctl documentation requires", and ep_eventpoll_bp_ioctl()
does return -ENOIOCTLCMD for unknown commands. However,
ep_eventpoll_ioctl() only passes EPIOCSPARAMS and EPIOCGPARAMS to it and
handles all other commands in its own default case, which returns
-EINVAL, so that path is never reached.

This is visible to userspace. For example, isatty(), ttyname() and
tcgetattr() on an epoll file descriptor set errno to EINVAL, while they
set ENOTTY for any other file descriptor that does not refer to a
terminal, as they also did for epoll file descriptors before v6.9.

Return -ENOIOCTLCMD from the default case, which the VFS turns into
-ENOTTY, and update the epoll_busy_poll selftest, which expected EINVAL
for an unknown command.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/r/20240125225704.12781-1-jdamato@fastly.com

Fixes: 18e2bf0edf4d ("eventpoll: Add epoll ioctl for epoll_params")
Signed-off-by: Hengyu Liang <hengyul@cs.unc.edu>
---
 fs/eventpoll.c                                | 2 +-
 tools/testing/selftests/net/epoll_busy_poll.c | 4 ++--
 2 files changed, 3 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/fs/eventpoll.c b/fs/eventpoll.c
index e0c4bf88a838..adf30b720b13 100644
--- a/fs/eventpoll.c
+++ b/fs/eventpoll.c
@@ -1264,7 +1264,7 @@ static long ep_eventpoll_ioctl(struct file *file, unsigned int cmd,
 		ret = ep_eventpoll_bp_ioctl(file, cmd, arg);
 		break;
 	default:
-		ret = -EINVAL;
+		ret = -ENOIOCTLCMD;
 		break;
 	}
 
diff --git a/tools/testing/selftests/net/epoll_busy_poll.c b/tools/testing/selftests/net/epoll_busy_poll.c
index adf8dd0b5e0b..6b0b3213ffad 100644
--- a/tools/testing/selftests/net/epoll_busy_poll.c
+++ b/tools/testing/selftests/net/epoll_busy_poll.c
@@ -313,8 +313,8 @@ TEST_F(epoll_busy_poll, test_invalid_ioctl)
 	EXPECT_EQ(-1, ret)
 		TH_LOG("invalid ioctl should return error");
 
-	EXPECT_EQ(EINVAL, errno)
-		TH_LOG("invalid ioctl should set errno to EINVAL");
+	EXPECT_EQ(ENOTTY, errno)
+		TH_LOG("invalid ioctl should set errno to ENOTTY");
 }
 
 TEST_HARNESS_MAIN
-- 
2.53.0


             reply	other threads:[~2026-09-24 18:58 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 5+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2026-09-24 18:57 hengyul [this message]
2026-09-24 21:59 ` [PATCH] eventpoll: return -ENOIOCTLCMD for unknown ioctl commands Joe Damato
2026-09-30  9:50   ` Hengyu Liang
2026-10-01 20:05     ` Joe Damato
2026-10-01 20:06 ` Joe Damato

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