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From: Vinicius Costa Gomes <vinicius.gomes@intel.com>
To: Amir Goldstein <amir73il@gmail.com>
Cc: Christian Brauner <brauner@kernel.org>, hu1.chen@intel.com,
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 <linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org>, Linus Torvalds
 <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>, David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>, Seth
 Forshee <sforshee@kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [RFC] HACK: overlayfs: Optimize overlay/restore creds
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Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2023 06:33:59 -0800
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Amir Goldstein <amir73il@gmail.com> writes:

> On Mon, Dec 18, 2023 at 11:57=E2=80=AFPM Vinicius Costa Gomes
> <vinicius.gomes@intel.com> wrote:
>>
>> Christian Brauner <brauner@kernel.org> writes:
>>
>> >> > Yes, the important thing is that an object cannot change
>> >> > its non_refcount property during its lifetime -
>> >>
>> >> ... which means that put_creds_ref() should assert that
>> >> there is only a single refcount - the one handed out by
>> >> prepare_creds_ref() before removing non_refcount or
>> >> directly freeing the cred object.
>> >>
>> >> I must say that the semantics of making a non-refcounted copy
>> >> to an object whose lifetime is managed by the caller sounds a lot
>> >> less confusing to me.
>> >
>> > So can't we do an override_creds() variant that is effectively just:
>
> Yes, I think that we can....
>
>> >
>> > /* caller guarantees lifetime of @new */
>> > const struct cred *foo_override_cred(const struct cred *new)
>> > {
>> >       const struct cred *old =3D current->cred;
>> >       rcu_assign_pointer(current->cred, new);
>> >       return old;
>> > }
>> >
>> > /* caller guarantees lifetime of @old */
>> > void foo_revert_creds(const struct cred *old)
>> > {
>> >       const struct cred *override =3D current->cred;
>> >       rcu_assign_pointer(current->cred, old);
>> > }
>> >
>
> Even better(?), we can do this in the actual guard helpers to
> discourage use without a guard:
>
> struct override_cred {
>         struct cred *cred;
> };
>
> DEFINE_GUARD(override_cred, struct override_cred *,
>             override_cred_save(_T),
>             override_cred_restore(_T));
>
> ...
>
> void override_cred_save(struct override_cred *new)
> {
>         new->cred =3D rcu_replace_pointer(current->cred, new->cred, true);
> }
>
> void override_cred_restore(struct override_cred *old)
> {
>         rcu_assign_pointer(current->cred, old->cred);
> }
>
>> > Maybe I really fail to understand this problem or the proposed solutio=
n:
>> > the single reference that overlayfs keeps in ovl->creator_cred is tied
>> > to the lifetime of the overlayfs superblock, no? And anyone who needs a
>> > long term cred reference e.g, file->f_cred will take it's own reference
>> > anyway. So it should be safe to just keep that reference alive until
>> > overlayfs is unmounted, no? I'm sure it's something quite obvious why
>> > that doesn't work but I'm just not seeing it currently.
>>
>> My read of the code says that what you are proposing should work. (what
>> I am seeing is that in the "optimized" cases, the only practical effect
>> of override/revert is the rcu_assign_pointer() dance)
>>
>> I guess that the question becomes: Do we want this property (that the
>> 'cred' associated with a subperblock/similar is long lived and the
>> "inner" refcount can be omitted) to be encoded in the constructor? Or do
>> we want it to be "encoded" in a call by call basis?
>>
>
> Neither.
>
> Christian's proposal does not involve marking the cred object as
> long lived, which looks a much better idea to me.
>

In my mind, I am reading his suggestion as the flag "long lived
cred/lives long enough" is "in our brains" vs. what I proposed that the
flag was "in the object". The effect of the "flag" is the same: when to
use a lighter version (no refcount) of override/revert.

What I was thinking was more more under the covers, implicit. And I can
see the advantages of having them more explicit.

> The performance issues you observed are (probably) due to get/put
> of cred refcount in the helpers {override,revert}_creds().
>

Yes, they are. Sorry that it was lost in the context. The original
report is here:

https://lore.kernel.org/all/20231018074553.41333-1-hu1.chen@intel.com/

> Christian suggested lightweight variants of {override,revert}_creds()
> that do not change refcount. Combining those with a guard and
> I don't see what can go wrong (TM).
>
> If you try this out and post a patch, please be sure to include the
> motivation for the patch along with performance numbers in the
> commit message, even if only posting an RFC patch.
>

Of course.

And to be sure, I will go with Christian's suggestion, it looks neat,
and having a lighter version of references is a more common idiom.

Thank you all.


Cheers,
--=20
Vinicius