Re: [Y2038] [PATCH 04/20] mount: Add mount warning for impending timestamp expiry

From: Deepa Dinamani <deepa.kernel@gmail.com>
To: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>
Cc: Ben Hutchings <ben.hutchings@codethink.co.uk>,
	Alexander Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
	Linux FS-devel Mailing List <linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org>,
	y2038 Mailman List <y2038@lists.linaro.org>
Subject: Re: [Y2038] [PATCH 04/20] mount: Add mount warning for impending timestamp expiry
Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2019 09:09:35 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CABeXuvpAPp98G2gCczB3n=izv4aM7vacdbPONiELrw-1ZOrd=g@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAK8P3a0CADLUeXvsBHNAC8ekLoo0o0uYz2arBqZ=1N+Xp8HNvA@mail.gmail.com>

On Mon, Aug 12, 2019 at 7:11 AM Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Aug 12, 2019 at 3:25 PM Ben Hutchings
> <ben.hutchings@codethink.co.uk> wrote:
> > On Sat, 2019-08-10 at 13:44 -0700, Deepa Dinamani wrote:
> > > On Mon, Aug 5, 2019 at 7:14 AM Ben Hutchings
> > > <ben.hutchings@codethink.co.uk> wrote:
> > > > On Mon, 2019-07-29 at 18:49 -0700, Deepa Dinamani wrote:
> > > > > The warning reuses the uptime max of 30 years used by the
> > > > > setitimeofday().
> > > > >
> > > > > Note that the warning is only added for new filesystem mounts
> > > > > through the mount syscall. Automounts do not have the same warning.
> > > > [...]
> > > >
> > > > Another thing - perhaps this warning should be suppressed for read-only
> > > > mounts?
> > >
> > > Many filesystems support read only mounts only. We do fill in right
> > > granularities and limits for these filesystems as well. In keeping
> > > with the trend, I have added the warning accordingly. I don't think I
> > > have a preference either way. But, not warning for the red only mounts
> > > adds another if case. If you have a strong preference, I could add it
> > > in.
> >
> > It seems to me that the warning is needed if there is a possibility of
> > data loss (incorrect timestamps, potentially leading to incorrect
> > decisions about which files are newer).  This can happen only when a
> > filesystem is mounted read-write, or when a filesystem image is
> > created.
> >
> > I think that warning for read-only mounts would be an annoyance to
> > users retrieving files from old filesystems.
>
> I agree, the warning is not helpful for read-only mounts. An earlier
> plan was to completely disallow writable mounts that might risk an
> overflow (in some configurations at least). The warning replaces that
> now, and I think it should also just warn for the cases that would
> otherwise have been dangerous.

Ok, I will make the change to exclude new read only mounts. I will use
__mnt_is_readonly() so that it also exculdes filesystems that are
readonly also.
The diff looks like below:

-       if (!error && sb->s_time_max &&
+       if (!error && !__mnt_is_readonly(mnt) &&
            (ktime_get_real_seconds() + TIME_UPTIME_SEC_MAX > sb->s_time_max)) {

Note that we can get rid of checking for non zero sb->s_time_max now.

-Deepa