Re: [PATCH v3 1/3] namei: implement O_BENEATH-style AT_* flags

From: Aleksa Sarai <cyphar@cyphar.com>
To: Al Viro <viro@ZenIV.linux.org.uk>
Cc: Eric Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com>,
	Christian Brauner <christian@brauner.io>,
	Jeff Layton <jlayton@kernel.org>,
	"J. Bruce Fields" <bfields@fieldses.org>,
	Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>, Andy Lutomirski <luto@kernel.org>,
	David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>, Jann Horn <jannh@google.com>,
	Tycho Andersen <tycho@tycho.ws>,
	David Drysdale <drysdale@google.com>,
	dev@opencontainers.org, containers@lists.linux-foundation.org,
	linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
	linux-arch@vger.kernel.org, linux-api@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 1/3] namei: implement O_BENEATH-style AT_* flags
Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2018 19:20:03 +1100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20181013082003.5fvgx3g4i2vx2cdt@ryuk> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20181013080511.GT32577@ZenIV.linux.org.uk>

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On 2018-10-13, Al Viro <viro@ZenIV.linux.org.uk> wrote:
> > Pardon me, but... huh?  The reason for your two calls of dirfd_path_init() is,
> > AFAICS, the combination of absolute pathname with both LOOKUP_XDEV and
> > LOOKUP_BENEATH at the same time.  That combination is treated as if the pathname
> > had been relative.  Note that LOOKUP_BENEATH alone is ignored for absolute ones
> > (and with a good reason - it's a no-op on path_init() level in that case).
> > 
> > What the hell?  It complicates your code and doesn't seem to provide any benefits
> > whatsoever -- you could bloody well have passed the relative pathname to start with.
> > 
> > IDGI...  Without that kludge it becomes simply "do as we currently do for absolute
> > pathnames, call dirfd_path_init() for relative ones".  And I would argue that
> > taking LOOKUP_BENEATH handling out of dirfd_path_init() into path_init() (relative)
> > case would be a good idea.
> > 
> > As it is, the logics is very hard to follow.
> 
> 	... and it fails on LOOKUP_BENEATH anyway.  Egads...  So that's for your
> LOOKUP_CHROOT ;-/  IMO that's awful, especially with the way you've spread those
> LOOKUP_CHROOT cases between these two.

Yeah, the ->root setting in dirfd_path_init() is ugly. :/

> 	Why not simply have O_THISROOT pick root by dirfd and call file_open_root()?

Wouldn't this require replicating the dirfd_path_init()-like code inside
all of the path_*at() callers which use path_init()? Or is there another
common place we could put it?

> And if something wants it for stat(), etc. just have them use it combined with
> O_PATH and pass the result to ...at()...

This works for stat and quite a few other things (which is why I only
added openat(2) support for the moment), but I think we'd eventually
need something like this for renameat2(2) as well as a few other choice
*at(2) syscalls. Though I also think that more AT_EMPTY_PATH support
would removed the need for _most_ *at(2) implementations to use this.

-- 
Aleksa Sarai
Senior Software Engineer (Containers)
SUSE Linux GmbH
<https://www.cyphar.com/>

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