Re: [PATCH] ovl: ignore lower entries when checking purity of non-directory entries

[Vivek Goyal <vgoyal@redhat.com>]

On Sun, Jan 31, 2016 at 04:17:53PM +0300, Konstantin Khlebnikov wrote:
> After rename file dentry still holds reference to lower dentry from
> previous location. This doesn't matter for data access because data
> cames from upper dentry. But this stale lower dentry taints dentry
> at new location and turns it into non-pure upper. Such file leaves
> visible whiteout entry after remove in directory which shouldn't
> have whiteouts at all.
> 
> Overlayfs already tracks pureness of file location in oe->opaque.
> This patch just uses that for detecting actual path type.
> 
> Comment from Vivek Goyal's patch:
> 
> Here are the details of the problem. Do following.
> 
> $ mkdir upper lower work merged upper/dir/
> $ touch lower/test
> $ sudo mount -t overlay overlay -olowerdir=lower,upperdir=upper,workdir=work
> merged
> $ mv merged/test merged/dir/
> $ rm merged/dir/test
> $ ls -l merged/dir/
> /usr/bin/ls: cannot access merged/dir/test: No such file or directory
> total 0
> c????????? ? ? ? ?            ? test
> 
> Basic problem seems to be that once a file has been unlinked, a
> whiteout has been left behind which was not needed and hence it becomes
> visible.
> 
> whiteout is visible because parent dir is of not type MERGE, hence
> od->is_real is set during ovl_dir_open(). And that means ovl_iterate()
> passes on iterate handling directly to underlying fs. Underlying fs does
> not know/filter whiteouts so it becomes visible to user.
> 
> Why did we leave a whiteout to begin with when we should not have.
> ovl_do_remove() checks for OVL_TYPE_PURE_UPPER() and does not leave
> whiteout if file is pure upper. In this case file is not found to be
> pure upper hence whiteout is left.
> 
> So why file was not PURE_UPPER in this case? I think because dentry is
> still carrying some leftover state which was valid before rename. For example,
> od->numlower was set to 1 as it was a lower file. After rename, this state
> is not valid anymore as there is no such file in lower.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Konstantin Khlebnikov <koct9i@gmail.com>
> Reported-by: Viktor Stanchev <me@viktorstanchev.com>
> Diagnosed-by: Vivek Goyal <vgoyal@redhat.com>
> Link: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=109611

Hi Konstantin,

Thanks for the patch. This patch works for me also does not break
unionmount-testsuite.

This change also sounds reasonable to me. (given we can't free lower). So
over rename we will be keeping references to dentries which we should
not have to. I guess there does not seem to be a better option.

Acked-by: Vivek Goyal <vgoyal@redhat.com>

Thanks
Vivek



> ---
>  fs/overlayfs/dir.c   |    7 +++++++
>  fs/overlayfs/super.c |   12 +++++++-----
>  2 files changed, 14 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/fs/overlayfs/dir.c b/fs/overlayfs/dir.c
> index ed95272d57a6..edf83f325bca 100644
> --- a/fs/overlayfs/dir.c
> +++ b/fs/overlayfs/dir.c
> @@ -903,6 +903,13 @@ static int ovl_rename2(struct inode *olddir, struct dentry *old,
>  	if (!overwrite && new_is_dir && !old_opaque && new_opaque)
>  		ovl_remove_opaque(newdentry);
>  
> +	/*
> +	 * Old dentry now lives in different location. Dentries in
> +	 * lowerstack are stale. We cannot drop them here because
> +	 * access to them is lockless. This could be only pure upper
> +	 * or opaque directory - numlower is zero. Or upper non-dir
> +	 * entry - its pureness is tracked by flag opaque.
> +	 */
>  	if (old_opaque != new_opaque) {
>  		ovl_dentry_set_opaque(old, new_opaque);
>  		if (!overwrite)
> diff --git a/fs/overlayfs/super.c b/fs/overlayfs/super.c
> index 8d826bd56b26..ba28b007005e 100644
> --- a/fs/overlayfs/super.c
> +++ b/fs/overlayfs/super.c
> @@ -76,12 +76,14 @@ enum ovl_path_type ovl_path_type(struct dentry *dentry)
>  	if (oe->__upperdentry) {
>  		type = __OVL_PATH_UPPER;
>  
> -		if (oe->numlower) {
> -			if (S_ISDIR(dentry->d_inode->i_mode))
> -				type |= __OVL_PATH_MERGE;
> -		} else if (!oe->opaque) {
> +		/*
> +		 * Non-dir dentry can hold lower dentry from previous
> +		 * location. Its purity depends only on opaque flag.
> +		 */
> +		if (oe->numlower && S_ISDIR(dentry->d_inode->i_mode))
> +			type |= __OVL_PATH_MERGE;
> +		else if (!oe->opaque)
>  			type |= __OVL_PATH_PURE;
> -		}
>  	} else {
>  		if (oe->numlower > 1)
>  			type |= __OVL_PATH_MERGE;