From: Zach Brown <zab@redhat.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/2] ext4: Handle readdir when a file is converted from
 inline to block based.
Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2013 11:44:12 -0700
Message-ID: <20130328184412.GF16651@lenny.home.zabbo.net>
References: <1364466899-5599-1-git-send-email-tm@tao.ma>
 <1364466899-5599-2-git-send-email-tm@tao.ma>
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Cc: linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org
To: Tao Ma <tm@tao.ma>
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In-Reply-To: <1364466899-5599-2-git-send-email-tm@tao.ma>
Sender: linux-ext4-owner@vger.kernel.org

> Zach reported that if a dir is inlined, the offset is within the inode, while
> if we have done the conversion, the dir now will have a block offset or even
> a hashed pos. The good thing is that ext4 is also prepared to handle some
> situation that the dir is changed during many calls of getdents.

This doesn't fix the problem.  The problem isn't using the right code
path within ext4 for either inline or normal block directories.

The problem is that offsets for existing files change.  Yeah, ext4 also
has this problem when it converts from classic linear dirents to hashed
dirents, but I bet that basically doesn't happen any more.  Inline dirs
are making the problem happen for every single directory as it grows.

There's two ways to experience the bug:

1) nfs clients getting the wrong entry because the offset has changed
from the time that they got it from the server

2) more worryingly: a concurrent readdir() can see duplicate entries
from simply advancing f_pos as it does normally

Here's a quick little demonstration of the second case:

d_off: 2 d_name: ., f_pos 2
d_off: 4 d_name: .., f_pos 4
d_off: 16 d_name: a, f_pos 16
d_off: 28 d_name: b, f_pos 28
d_off: 40 d_name: c, f_pos 40
d_off: 371778706554281332 d_name: .., f_pos 18446744071750344052
d_off: 1068979911240654558 d_name: b, f_pos 18446744072795659998
d_off: 6187216788877381273 d_name: c, f_pos 1633586841
d_off: 6280769109141524706 d_name: e, f_pos 1386254562

Run the following in a newly created empty dir with inline_data:

#include <stdlib.h>
#include <dirent.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <errno.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <sys/syscall.h>

struct linux_dirent {
	long           d_ino;
	off_t          d_off;
	unsigned short d_reclen;
	char           d_name[];
};

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
	struct linux_dirent dent;
	char name[2] = {0,};
	int i;
	int ret;
	int fd;

	fd = open(".", O_RDONLY | O_DIRECTORY);
	if (fd < 0) {
		printf("open(\".\", O_RDONLY|O_DIRECTORY) failed: %u (%s)\n",
		       errno, strerror(errno));
		exit(1);
	}
	
	for (i = 0; i < 26; i++) {
		name[0] = 'a' + i;
		mknod(name, S_IFREG|0755, 0);
		ret = syscall(SYS_getdents, fd, &dent, sizeof(dent));
		if (ret < 1)
			break;
		printf("d_off: %llu d_name: %s, f_pos %llu\n",
		       (unsigned long long)dent.d_off,
		       dent.d_name,
		       (unsigned long long)lseek(fd, 0, SEEK_CUR));
	}

	return 0;
}