Re: tmpfs inode leakage when opening file with O_TMP_FILE

[Darrick J. Wong]

On Mon, Feb 18, 2019 at 08:23:20PM -0800, Hugh Dickins wrote:
> On Fri, 15 Feb 2019, Hugh Dickins wrote:
> > On Thu, 14 Feb 2019, Darrick J. Wong wrote:
> > > > On Mon, 11 Feb 2019 15:18:11 +0100 Matej Kupljen <matej.kupljen@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > > > 
> > > > > it seems that when opening file on file system that is mounted on
> > > > > tmpfs with the O_TMPFILE flag and using linkat call after that, it
> > > > > uses 2 inodes instead of 1.
> ...
> > > 
> > > Heh, tmpfs and its weird behavior where each new link counts as a new
> > > inode because "each new link needs a new dentry, pinning lowmem, and
> > > tmpfs dentries cannot be pruned until they are unlinked."
> > 
> > That's very much a peculiarity of tmpfs, so agreed: it's what I expect
> > to be the cause, but I've not actually tracked it through and fixed yet.
> ...
> > 
> > > I /think/ the proper fix is to change shmem_link to decrement ifree only
> > > if the inode has nonzero nlink, e.g.
> > > 
> > > 	/*
> > > 	 * No ordinary (disk based) filesystem counts links as inodes;
> > > 	 * but each new link needs a new dentry, pinning lowmem, and
> > > 	 * tmpfs dentries cannot be pruned until they are unlinked.  If
> > > 	 * we're linking an O_TMPFILE file into the tmpfs we can skip
> > > 	 * this because there's still only one link to the inode.
> > > 	 */
> > > 	if (inode->i_nlink > 0) {
> > > 		ret = shmem_reserve_inode(inode->i_sb);
> > > 		if (ret)
> > > 			goto out;
> > > 	}
> > > 
> > > Says me who was crawling around poking at O_TMPFILE behavior all morning.
> > > Not sure if that's right; what happens to the old dentry?
> 
> Not sure what you mean by "what happens to the old dentry?"
> But certainly the accounting feels a bit like a shell game,
> and my attempts to explain it have not satisfied even me.
> 
> The way I'm finding it helpful to think, is to imagine tmpfs'
> count of inodes actually to be implemented as a count of dentries.
> And the 1 for the last remaining goes away in the shmem_free_inode()
> at the end of shmem_evict_inode().  Does that answer "what happens"?
> 
> Since applying the patch, I have verified (watching "dentry" and
> "shmem_inode_cache" in /proc/slabinfo) that doing Matej's sequence
> repeatedly does not leak any "df -i" nor dentries nor inodes.
> 
> > 
> > I'm relieved to see your "/think/" above and "Not sure" there :)
> > Me too.  It is so easy to get these counting things wrong, especially
> > when distributed between the generic and the specific file system.
> > 
> > I'm not going to attempt a pronouncement until I've had time to
> > sink properly into it at the weekend, when I'll follow your guide
> > and work it through - thanks a lot for getting this far, Darrick.
> 
> I have now sunk into it, and sure that I agree with your patch,
> filled out below (I happen to have changed "inode->i_nlink > 0" to
> "inode->i_nlink" just out of some personal preference at the time).
> One can argue that it's not technically quite the right place, but
> it is the place where we can detect the condition without getting
> into unnecessary further complications, and does the job well enough.
> 
> May I change "Suggested-by: Darrick J. Wong <darrick.wong@xxxxxxxxxx>"
> to your "Signed-off-by" before sending on to Andrew "From" you?

That's fine with me!

> Thanks!
> Hugh
> 
> [PATCH] tmpfs: fix link accounting when a tmpfile is linked in
> 
> tmpfs has a peculiarity of accounting hard links as if they were separate
> inodes: so that when the number of inodes is limited, as it is by default,
> a user cannot soak up an unlimited amount of unreclaimable dcache memory
> just by repeatedly linking a file.
> 
> But when v3.11 added O_TMPFILE, and the ability to use linkat() on the fd,
> we missed accommodating this new case in tmpfs: "df -i" shows that an
> extra "inode" remains accounted after the file is unlinked and the fd
> closed and the actual inode evicted.  If a user repeatedly links tmpfiles
> into a tmpfs, the limit will be hit (ENOSPC) even after they are deleted.
> 
> Just skip the extra reservation from shmem_link() in this case: there's
> a sense in which this first link of a tmpfile is then cheaper than a
> hard link of another file, but the accounting works out, and there's
> still good limiting, so no need to do anything more complicated.
> 
> Fixes: f4e0c30c191 ("allow the temp files created by open() to be linked to")
> Reported-by: Matej Kupljen <matej.kupljen@xxxxxxxxx>
> Suggested-by: Darrick J. Wong <darrick.wong@xxxxxxxxxx>

Or if you prefer:

Reviewed-by: Darrick J. Wong <darrick.wong@xxxxxxxxxx>

--D

> Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hughd@xxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
> 
>  mm/shmem.c |   10 +++++++---
>  1 file changed, 7 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
> 
> --- 5.0-rc7/mm/shmem.c	2019-01-06 19:15:45.764805103 -0800
> +++ linux/mm/shmem.c	2019-02-18 13:56:48.388032606 -0800
> @@ -2854,10 +2854,14 @@ static int shmem_link(struct dentry *old
>  	 * No ordinary (disk based) filesystem counts links as inodes;
>  	 * but each new link needs a new dentry, pinning lowmem, and
>  	 * tmpfs dentries cannot be pruned until they are unlinked.
> +	 * But if an O_TMPFILE file is linked into the tmpfs, the
> +	 * first link must skip that, to get the accounting right.
>  	 */
> -	ret = shmem_reserve_inode(inode->i_sb);
> -	if (ret)
> -		goto out;
> +	if (inode->i_nlink) {
> +		ret = shmem_reserve_inode(inode->i_sb);
> +		if (ret)
> +			goto out;
> +	}
>  
>  	dir->i_size += BOGO_DIRENT_SIZE;
>  	inode->i_ctime = dir->i_ctime = dir->i_mtime = current_time(inode);