[RFC PATCH] fs: allow open(dir, O_TMPFILE|..., 0) with mode 0

From: Eric Rannaud
Date: Thu Oct 30 2014 - 05:09:00 EST


The man page for open(2) indicates that when O_CREAT is specified, the
'mode' argument applies only to future accesses to the file:

Note that this mode applies only to future accesses of the newly
created file; the open() call that creates a read-only file
may well return a read/write file descriptor.

The man page for open(2) implies that 'mode' is treated identically by
O_CREAT and O_TMPFILE.

O_TMPFILE, however, behaves differently:

int fd = open("/tmp", O_TMPFILE | O_RDWR, 0);
assert(fd == -1);
assert(errno == EACCES);

int fd = open("/tmp", O_TMPFILE | O_RDWR, 0600);
assert(fd > 0);

For O_CREAT, do_last() sets acc_mode to MAY_OPEN only:

if (*opened & FILE_CREATED) {
/* Don't check for write permission, don't truncate */
open_flag &= ~O_TRUNC;
will_truncate = false;
acc_mode = MAY_OPEN;
path_to_nameidata(path, nd);
goto finish_open_created;
}

But for O_TMPFILE, do_tmpfile() passes the full op->acc_mode to
may_open().

This patch lines up the behavior of O_TMPFILE with O_CREAT. After the
inode is created, may_open() is called with acc_mode = MAY_OPEN, in
do_tmpfile().

A different, but related glibc bug revealed the discrepancy:
https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=17523

The glibc lazily loads the 'mode' argument of open() and openat() using
va_arg() only if O_CREAT is present in 'flags' (to support both the 2
argument and the 3 argument forms of open; same idea for openat()).
However, the glibc ignores the 'mode' argument if O_TMPFILE is in
'flags'.

On x86_64, for open(), it magically works anyway, as 'mode' is in
RDX when entering open(), and is still in RDX on SYSCALL, which is where
the kernel looks for the 3rd argument of a syscall.

But openat() is not quite so lucky: 'mode' is in RCX when entering the
glibc wrapper for openat(), while the kernel looks for the 4th argument
of a syscall in R10. Indeed, the syscall calling convention differs from
the regular calling convention in this respect on x86_64. So the kernel
sees mode = 0 when trying to use glibc openat() with O_TMPFILE, and
fails with EACCES.

Signed-off-by: Eric Rannaud <e@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
---
fs/namei.c | 3 ++-
1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/fs/namei.c b/fs/namei.c
index 42df664e95e5..78512898d3ba 100644
--- a/fs/namei.c
+++ b/fs/namei.c
@@ -3154,7 +3154,8 @@ static int do_tmpfile(int dfd, struct filename *pathname,
if (error)
goto out2;
audit_inode(pathname, nd->path.dentry, 0);
- error = may_open(&nd->path, op->acc_mode, op->open_flag);
+ /* Don't check for other permissions, the inode was just created */
+ error = may_open(&nd->path, MAY_OPEN, op->open_flag);
if (error)
goto out2;
file->f_path.mnt = nd->path.mnt;
--
2.1.2

--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/