Re: [PATCH 5/5] vfs: don't allow writes to swap files

[Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>]

On Tue, Jun 25, 2019 at 07:33:31PM -0700, Darrick J. Wong wrote:
> --- a/fs/attr.c
> +++ b/fs/attr.c
> @@ -236,6 +236,9 @@ int notify_change(struct dentry * dentry, struct iattr * attr, struct inode **de
>  	if (IS_IMMUTABLE(inode))
>  		return -EPERM;
>  
> +	if (IS_SWAPFILE(inode))
> +		return -ETXTBSY;
> +
>  	if ((ia_valid & (ATTR_MODE | ATTR_UID | ATTR_GID | ATTR_TIMES_SET)) &&
>  	    IS_APPEND(inode))
>  		return -EPERM;

Er...  So why exactly is e.g. chmod(2) forbidden for swapfiles?  Or touch(1),
for that matter...

> diff --git a/mm/swapfile.c b/mm/swapfile.c
> index 596ac98051c5..1ca4ee8c2d60 100644
> --- a/mm/swapfile.c
> +++ b/mm/swapfile.c
> @@ -3165,6 +3165,19 @@ SYSCALL_DEFINE2(swapon, const char __user *, specialfile, int, swap_flags)
>  	if (error)
>  		goto bad_swap;
>  
> +	/*
> +	 * Flush any pending IO and dirty mappings before we start using this
> +	 * swap file.
> +	 */
> +	if (S_ISREG(inode->i_mode)) {
> +		inode->i_flags |= S_SWAPFILE;
> +		error = inode_drain_writes(inode);
> +		if (error) {
> +			inode->i_flags &= ~S_SWAPFILE;
> +			goto bad_swap;
> +		}
> +	}

Why are swap partitions any less worthy of protection?