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Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2023 04:53:13 +0000
From: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
To: linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
	Christian Brauner <brauner@kernel.org>, tytso@mit.edu,
	linux-f2fs-devel@lists.sourceforge.net, ebiggers@kernel.org,
	jaegeuk@kernel.org, linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org,
	"Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@xmission.com>,
	Miklos Szeredi <miklos@szeredi.hu>,
	Gabriel Krisman Bertazi <gabriel@krisman.be>
Subject: Re: fun with d_invalidate() vs. d_splice_alias() was Re: [f2fs-dev]
 [PATCH v6 0/9] Support negative dentries on case-insensitive ext4 and f2fs
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Sender: Al Viro <viro@ftp.linux.org.uk>

On Mon, Nov 27, 2023 at 06:38:43AM +0000, Al Viro wrote:

> > FWIW, I suspect that the right answer would be along the lines of
> > 	* if d_splice_alias() does move an exsiting (attached) alias in
> > place, it ought to dissolve all mountpoints in subtree being moved.
> > There might be subtleties,

Are there ever...  Starting with the "our test for loop creation
(alias is a direct ancestor, need to fail with -ELOOP) is dependent
upon rename_lock being held all along".

Folks, what semantics do we want for dissolving mounts on splice?
The situation when it happens is when we have a subtree on e.g. NFS
and have some mounts (on client) inside that.  Then somebody on
server moves the root of that subtree somewhere else and we try
to do a lookup in new place.  Options:

1) our dentry for directory that got moved on server is moved into
new place, along with the entire subtree *and* everything mounted
on it.  Very dubious semantics, especially since if we look the
old location up before looking for new one, the mounts will be
dissolved; no way around that.

2) lookup fails.  It's already possible; e.g. if server has
/srv/nfs/1/2/3 moved to /srv/nfs/x, then /srv/nfs/1/2 moved
to /srv/nfs/x/y and client has a process with cwd in /mnt/nfs/1/2/3
doing a lookup for "y", there's no way in hell to handle that -
the lookup will return the fhandle of /srv/nfs/x, which is the
same thing the client has for /mnt/nfs/1/2; we *can't* move that
dentry to /mnt/nfs/1/2/3/y - not without creating a detached loop.
We can also run into -ESTALE if one of the trylocks in
__d_unalias() fails.  Having the same happen if there are mounts
in the subtree we are trying to splice would be unpleasant, but
not fatal.  The trouble is, that won't be a transient failure -
not until somebody tries to look the old location up.

3) dissolve the mounts.  Doable, but it's not easy; especially
since we end up having to redo the loop-prevention check after
the mounts had been dissolved.  And that check may be failing
by that time, with no way to undo that dissolving...