Re: [REGRESSION] Re: [PATCH v8 15/19] mm: don't allow huge faults for files with pre content watches

From: Jan Kara
Date: Mon Feb 03 2025 - 07:42:18 EST


On Sun 02-02-25 11:04:02, Christian Brauner wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 02, 2025 at 08:46:21AM +0100, Amir Goldstein wrote:
> > On Sun, Feb 2, 2025 at 1:58 AM Linus Torvalds
> > <torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > >
> > > On Sat, 1 Feb 2025 at 06:38, Christian Brauner <brauner@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Ok, but those "device fds" aren't really device fds in the sense that
> > > > they are character fds. They are regular files afaict from:
> > > >
> > > > vfio_device_open_file(struct vfio_device *device)
> > > >
> > > > (Well, it's actually worse as anon_inode_getfile() files don't have any
> > > > mode at all but that's beside the point.)?
> > > >
> > > > In any case, I think you're right that such files would (accidently?)
> > > > qualify for content watches afaict. So at least that should probably get
> > > > FMODE_NONOTIFY.
> > >
> > > Hmm. Can we just make all anon_inodes do that? I don't think you can
> > > sanely have pre-content watches on anon-inodes, since you can't really
> > > have access to them to _set_ the content watch from outside anyway..
> > >
> > > In fact, maybe do it in alloc_file_pseudo()?
> > >
> >
> > The problem is that we cannot set FMODE_NONOTIFY -
> > we tried that once but it regressed some workloads watching
> > write on pipe fd or something.
>
> Ok, that might be true. But I would assume that most users of
> alloc_file_pseudo() or the anonymous inode infrastructure will not care
> about fanotify events. I would not go for a separate helper. It'd be
> nice to keep the number of file allocation functions low.
>
> I'd rather have the subsystems that want it explicitly opt-in to
> fanotify watches, i.e., remove FMODE_NONOTIFY. Because right now we have
> broken fanotify support for e.g., nsfs already. So make the subsystems
> think about whether they actually want to support it.

Agreed, that would be a saner default.

> I would disqualify all anonymous inodes and see what actually does
> break. I naively suspect that almost no one uses anonymous inodes +
> fanotify. I'd be very surprised.
>
> I'm currently traveling (see you later btw) but from a very cursory
> reading I would naively suspect the following:
>
> // Suspects for FMODE_NONOTIFY
> drivers/dma-buf/dma-buf.c: file = alloc_file_pseudo(inode, dma_buf_mnt, "dmabuf",
> drivers/misc/cxl/api.c: file = alloc_file_pseudo(inode, cxl_vfs_mount, name,
> drivers/scsi/cxlflash/ocxl_hw.c: file = alloc_file_pseudo(inode, ocxlflash_vfs_mount, name,
> fs/anon_inodes.c: file = alloc_file_pseudo(inode, anon_inode_mnt, name,
> fs/hugetlbfs/inode.c: file = alloc_file_pseudo(inode, mnt, name, O_RDWR,
> kernel/bpf/token.c: file = alloc_file_pseudo(inode, path.mnt, BPF_TOKEN_INODE_NAME, O_RDWR, &bpf_token_fops);
> mm/secretmem.c: file = alloc_file_pseudo(inode, secretmem_mnt, "secretmem",
> block/bdev.c: bdev_file = alloc_file_pseudo_noaccount(BD_INODE(bdev),
> drivers/tty/pty.c: static int ptmx_open(struct inode *inode, struct file *filp)
>
> // Suspects for ~FMODE_NONOTIFY
> fs/aio.c: file = alloc_file_pseudo(inode, aio_mnt, "[aio]",

This is just a helper file for managing aio context so I don't think any
notification makes sense there (events are not well defined). So I'd say
FMODE_NONOTIFY here as well.

> fs/pipe.c: f = alloc_file_pseudo(inode, pipe_mnt, "",
> mm/shmem.c: res = alloc_file_pseudo(inode, mnt, name, O_RDWR,

This is actually used for stuff like IPC SEM where notification doesn't
make sense. It's also used when mmapping /dev/zero but that struct file
isn't easily accessible to userspace so overall I'd say this should be
FMODE_NONOTIFY as well.

> // Unsure:
> fs/nfs/nfs4file.c: filep = alloc_file_pseudo(r_ino, ss_mnt, read_name, O_RDONLY,

AFAICS this struct file is for copy offload and doesn't leave the kernel.
Hence FMODE_NONOTIFY should be fine.

> net/socket.c: file = alloc_file_pseudo(SOCK_INODE(sock), sock_mnt, dname,

In this case I think we need to be careful. It's a similar case as pipes so
probably we should use ~FMODE_NONOTIFY here from pure caution.

Honza
--
Jan Kara <jack@xxxxxxxx>
SUSE Labs, CR