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From: Amir Goldstein <amir73il@gmail.com>
To: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
Cc: Matthew Bobrowski <repnop@google.com>,
	Christian Brauner <christian.brauner@ubuntu.com>,
	Linux API <linux-api@vger.kernel.org>,
	linux-fsdevel <linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/2] fanotify: Add pidfd support to the fanotify API
Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2021 12:29:14 +0300	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAOQ4uxhmJgbSbk_w_gsYg+zLb9GJv6_oGrmfPiNEYao_U3z9=Q@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20210421080449.GK8706@quack2.suse.cz>

On Wed, Apr 21, 2021 at 11:04 AM Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> wrote:
>
> On Tue 20-04-21 12:36:59, Matthew Bobrowski wrote:
> > On Mon, Apr 19, 2021 at 05:02:33PM +0200, Christian Brauner wrote:
> > > A general question about struct fanotify_event_metadata and its
> > > extensibility model:
> > > looking through the code it seems that this struct is read via
> > > fanotify_rad(). So the user is expected to supply a buffer with at least
> > >
> > > #define FAN_EVENT_METADATA_LEN (sizeof(struct fanotify_event_metadata))
> > >
> > > bytes. In addition you can return the info to the user about how many
> > > bytes the kernel has written from fanotify_read().
> > >
> > > So afaict extending fanotify_event_metadata should be _fairly_
> > > straightforward, right? It would essentially the complement to
> > > copy_struct_from_user() which Aleksa and I added (1 or 2 years ago)
> > > which deals with user->kernel and you're dealing with kernel->user:
> > > - If the user supplied a buffer smaller than the minimum known struct
> > >   size -> reject.
> > > - If the user supplied a buffer < smaller than what the current kernel
> > >   supports -> copy only what userspace knows about, and return the size
> > >   userspace knows about.
> > > - If the user supplied a buffer that is larger than what the current
> > >   kernel knows about -> copy only what the kernel knows about, zero the
> > >   rest, and return the kernel size.
> > >
> > > Extension should then be fairly straightforward (64bit aligned
> > > increments)?
> >
> > You'd think that it's fairly straightforward, but I have a feeling
> > that the whole fanotify_event_metadata extensibility discussion and
> > the current limitation to do so revolves around whether it can be
> > achieved in a way which can guarantee that no userspace applications
> > would break. I think the answer to this is that there's no guarantee
> > because of <<reasons>>, so the decision to extend fanotify's feature
> > set was done via other means i.e. introduction of additional
> > structures.
>
> There's no real problem extending fanotify_event_metadata. We already have
> multiple extended version of that structure in use (see e.g. FAN_REPORT_FID
> flag and its effect, extended versions of the structure in
> include/uapi/linux/fanotify.h). The key for backward compatibility is to
> create extended struct only when explicitely requested by a flag when
> creating notification group - and that would be the case here -
> FAN_REPORT_PIDFD or how you called it. It is just that extending the
> structure means adding 8 bytes to each event and parsing extended structure
> is more cumbersome than just fetching s32 from a well known location.
>
> On the other hand extended structure is self-describing (i.e., you can tell
> the meaning of all the fields just from the event you receive) while
> reusing 'pid' field means that you have to know how the notification group
> was created (whether FAN_REPORT_PIDFD was used or not) to be able to
> interpret the contents of the event. Actually I think the self-describing
> feature of fanotify event stream is useful (e.g. when application manages
> multiple fanotify groups or when fanotify group descriptors are passed
> among processes) so now I'm more leaning towards using the extended
> structure instead of reusing 'pid' as Christian suggests. I'm sorry for the
> confusion.
>

But there is a middle path option.
The event metadata can be self described without extending it:

 struct fanotify_event_metadata {
        __u32 event_len;
        __u8 vers;
-       __u8 reserved;
+#define FANOTIFY_METADATA_FLAG_PIDFD   1
+       __u8 flags;
        __u16 metadata_len;
        __aligned_u64 mask;
        __s32 fd;

Thanks,
Amir.

  reply	other threads:[~2021-04-21  9:29 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 35+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2021-04-15 23:21 [PATCH 0/2] fanotify: Adding pidfd support to the fanotify API Matthew Bobrowski
2021-04-15 23:22 ` [PATCH 1/2] pidfd_create(): remove static qualifier and declare pidfd_create() in linux/pid.h Matthew Bobrowski
2021-04-19 10:13   ` Jan Kara
2021-04-19 12:50   ` Christian Brauner
2021-04-20  0:17     ` Matthew Bobrowski
2021-04-15 23:22 ` [PATCH 2/2] fanotify: Add pidfd support to the fanotify API Matthew Bobrowski
2021-04-16  6:27   ` Amir Goldstein
2021-04-16  7:05     ` Matthew Bobrowski
2021-04-16  7:53       ` Amir Goldstein
2021-04-16  8:08         ` Matthew Bobrowski
2021-04-19 13:02     ` Christian Brauner
2021-04-19 10:21   ` Jan Kara
2021-04-20  1:35     ` Matthew Bobrowski
2021-04-19 13:20   ` Christian Brauner
2021-04-19 13:53     ` Amir Goldstein
2021-04-19 14:44       ` Christian Brauner
2021-04-19 13:55     ` Jan Kara
2021-04-19 15:02       ` Christian Brauner
2021-04-20  2:36         ` Matthew Bobrowski
2021-04-21  8:04           ` Jan Kara
2021-04-21  9:29             ` Amir Goldstein [this message]
2021-04-21 10:00               ` Jan Kara
2021-04-21 10:12                 ` Amir Goldstein
2021-04-21 13:48                   ` Jan Kara
2021-04-21 14:46                     ` Christian Brauner
2021-04-22 23:06             ` Matthew Bobrowski
2021-04-23  7:39               ` Amir Goldstein
2021-04-23  8:02                 ` Matthew Bobrowski
2021-04-23  8:14                   ` Amir Goldstein
2021-04-26 10:26                     ` Matthew Bobrowski
2021-04-26 11:11                       ` Amir Goldstein
2021-04-27  3:35                         ` Matthew Bobrowski
2021-04-27  5:14                           ` Amir Goldstein
2021-04-28 22:53                             ` Matthew Bobrowski
2021-04-19 12:34 ` [PATCH 0/2] fanotify: Adding " Christian Brauner

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