From: Jason Andryuk <jandryuk@gmail.com>
To: Demi Marie Obenour <demi@invisiblethingslab.com>
Cc: "Marek Marczycowski-Górecki" <marmarek@invisiblethingslab.com>,
"Ian Jackson" <iwj@xenproject.org>, "Wei Liu" <wl@xen.org>,
"Anthony PERARD" <anthony.perard@citrix.com>,
xen-devel <xen-devel@lists.xenproject.org>
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH 0/2] libxl: support common cases without block script
Date: Wed, 28 Apr 2021 08:26:20 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAKf6xpvKFP6COEP+LBDHRe+MWy6rg=4YYO70rd7SU_96-FFY-Q@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <41538969-c59d-acc5-9eee-0dffca50d6ac@invisiblethingslab.com>
On Wed, Apr 28, 2021 at 3:00 AM Demi Marie Obenour
<demi@invisiblethingslab.com> wrote:
>
> When it comes to file-based block devices, the major difficulty is
> the extremely bad kernel API. The only fully safe way to use loop
> devices is to use LOOP_CONFIGURE with LO_FLAGS_AUTOCLEAR and hold a
> file descriptor open to the device until another piece of code (either
> another userspace program or the kernel) has grabbed a reference to it.
> Everything else risks either using a freed loop device (that might now
> be attached to a different file) or risks leaking them on unclean exit.
> The only exception is if one can make certain assumptions, such as no
> other program freeing loop devices for the file in question. This is
> a reasonable assumption for Qubes dom0, but neither for Qubes domU nor
> for Xen dom0 in general. Nevertheless, this is effectively what the
> current block script does: if I understand the code correctly, there
> is a race where badly timed calls to losetup by another process could
> result in the block script freeing the wrong loop device.
I posted this a while ago, but didn't get any response:
https://lore.kernel.org/xen-devel/CAKf6xpv-U91nF2Fik7GRN3SFeOWWcdR5R+ZcK5fgojE+-D43sg@mail.gmail.com/
tl;dr: AFAICT, the block script check_sharing function doesn't work
for loop devices
Regards,
Jason
prev parent reply other threads:[~2021-04-28 12:26 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 5+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2021-04-27 0:22 [RFC PATCH 0/2] libxl: support common cases without block script Marek Marczykowski-Górecki
2021-04-27 0:22 ` [RFC PATCH 1/2] libxl: rename 'error' label to 'out' as it is used for success too Marek Marczykowski-Górecki
2021-04-27 0:22 ` [RFC PATCH 2/2] libxl: allow to skip block script completely Marek Marczykowski-Górecki
2021-04-28 6:48 ` [RFC PATCH 0/2] libxl: support common cases without block script Demi Marie Obenour
2021-04-28 12:26 ` Jason Andryuk [this message]
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