From: "J. Bruce Fields" <bfields@fieldses.org>
To: Miklos Szeredi <miklos@szeredi.hu>
Cc: Andy Whitcroft <apw@canonical.com>,
linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH 0/2] issues with NFS filesystems as lower layer
Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2012 17:44:50 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20120911214450.GB28418@fieldses.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <87ipbkxoq3.fsf@tucsk.pomaz.szeredi.hu>
On Tue, Sep 11, 2012 at 10:56:52PM +0200, Miklos Szeredi wrote:
> "J. Bruce Fields" <bfields@fieldses.org> writes:
>
> >> > Secondly when using an NFSv3 R/O lower layer the filesystem permissions
> >> > check refuses permission to write to the inode which prevents us from
> >> > copying it up even though we have a writable upper layer. (With an ext4
> >> > lower layer the inode check will succeed if the inode is writable even
> >> > if the filesystem is not.) It is not clear what the right solution is
> >> > here. One approach is to check the inode permissions only (avoiding the
> >> > filesystem specific permissions op), but it is not clear we can rely on
> >> > these for all underlying filesystems. Perhaps this check should only be
> >> > used for NFS.
> >
> > Then couldn't you for example end up circumventing ACLs on the
> > underlying file to access data cached by reads from another user on the
> > same system?
>
> Ignoring ACL's should always give less access, isn't that right?
Not necessarily.
(It's up to the server--and if anything servers probably want to err on
the side of returning mode bits that are an upper, not a lower, bound on
the permissions.)
> > Is it possible to arrange that the check for a readonly filesystem be
> > done only by the vfs and not also by ->permission?
>
> You'd need to modify NFS servers for that to work, no? It's possible
> but not practical.
Oh, OK, I guess I assumed you were dealing with an NFS filesystem that
had been mounted readonly on the NFS client.
If it's a read-write mount of a filesystem that's read-only on the
server side: well, there is at least an error for that case: the server
should return NFSERR_ROFS, and you should see EROFS--could you do the
copy-up only in the case you get that error?
--b.
>
> Thanks,
> Miklos
>
>
>
> >
> > --b.
> >
> >> > Perhaps it needs to be a mount option. The second patch
> >> > (for discussion) following this email implements this, using the inode
> >> > permissions when the lowerlayer is read-only. This seems to work as
> >> > expected in my limited testing.
> >>
> >> I fear that will create an inconsistency between the read-only and the
> >> non-read-only case, even though both should behave the same.
> >>
> >> I think the cleanest would be to create a mount option to always use
> >> generic_permission (on both the lower and the upper fs). That would
> >> give us two, slightly different, operating modes but each would be
> >> self consistent.
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >> Miklos
> >> --
> >> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-fsdevel" in
> >> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> >> More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2012-09-11 21:44 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 9+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2012-09-06 15:56 [RFC PATCH 0/2] issues with NFS filesystems as lower layer Andy Whitcroft
2012-09-06 15:56 ` [RFC PATCH 1/2] ovl: ovl_copy_up_xattr may fail when the upper filesystem does not support the same xattrs Andy Whitcroft
2012-09-06 15:56 ` [PATCH 2/2] overlayfs: when the underlying filesystem is read-only use inode permissions Andy Whitcroft
2012-09-07 6:35 ` [RFC PATCH 0/2] issues with NFS filesystems as lower layer Miklos Szeredi
2012-09-07 19:38 ` J. Bruce Fields
2012-09-11 20:56 ` Miklos Szeredi
2012-09-11 21:44 ` J. Bruce Fields [this message]
2012-09-12 15:20 ` Miklos Szeredi
2012-09-12 16:07 ` J. Bruce Fields
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