Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2016 02:47:59 +0100
From: Al Viro <viro@ZenIV.linux.org.uk>
To: "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@xmission.com>
Cc: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>,
        Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
        Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net>, security@debian.org,
        "security@kernel.org" <security@kernel.org>,
        "security@ubuntu.com >> security" <security@ubuntu.com>,
        Peter Hurley <peter@hurleysoftware.com>,
        Serge Hallyn <serge.hallyn@ubuntu.com>, Willy Tarreau <w@1wt.eu>,
        Aurelien Jarno <aurelien@aurel32.net>,
        One Thousand Gnomes <gnomes@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>,
        Jann Horn <jann@thejh.net>, Greg KH <greg@kroah.com>,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        Jiri Slaby <jslaby@suse.com>, Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 01/13] devpts: Teach /dev/ptmx to find the associated
 devpts via path lookup
Message-ID: <20160412014759.GO25498@ZenIV.linux.org.uk>
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On Mon, Apr 11, 2016 at 08:23:00PM -0500, Eric W. Biederman wrote:

> Perhaps I am reading the code wrong but as I read it that information is
> simply not available in get_super.

Correct.  For a very good reason - the same superblock can bloody well end up
in many places; having it tied to _the_ mountpoint is just plain wrong.

You know how it would look done right?
	a) mount --after support
	b) devpts containing both /ptmx and /pts/1,...
	c) mount --type devpts --after none /dev

That's it.  And this would be way, way more useful that overlay-style unions;
it would *NOT* recurse into subdirectories.  Just a search list done right...

Not an option, unfortunately, since it obviously breaks userland setups -
even if we go ahead and implement that kind of non-recursive unions.  But
if we had a chance to design it from scratch, that would've been an interesting
option.