Re: [PATCH 3/3] ima: use fs method to read integrity data (updated patch description)

[Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>]

On Sat, Sep 16, 2017 at 11:20:47AM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> Sure, generic_file_write_iter() does take that lock exclusively, but
> not everybody uses generic_file_write_iter() at all for writing.
> 
> For example, xfs still uses that i_rwsem, but for block-aligned writes
> it will only get it shared. And I'm not convinced some other
> filesystem might not end up using some other lock entirely.

Only for direct I/O, and IMA and direct I/O don't work together.
>From ima_collect_measurement:

		if (file->f_flags & O_DIRECT) {
			audit_cause = "failed(directio)";
			result = -EACCES;
			goto out;
		}

(and yes, it should be checking for IOCB_DIRECT to avoid racy
f_flags manipulations, but that's another issue)

> The filesystem can do its own locking, and I'm starting to think that
> it would be better to just pass this "this is an integrity read" down
> to the filesystem, and expect the filesystem to do the locking based
> on that.

Well, that's exactly the point of the new ->integrity_read routine
I proposed and prototype.  The important thing is that it is called
with i_rwsem held because code mugh higher in the chain already
acquired it, but except for that it's entirely up to the file system.