d_type and bind mounts

From: Tavian Barnes
Date: Mon Feb 11 2019 - 14:59:49 EST


It seems that readdir()/getdents() fill d_type from the underlying
filesystem, not respecting bind mounts of non-directories:

$ touch mount_point
$ sudo mount --bind /dev/null mount_point
$ find -name mount_point -type c
$ find -name mount_point -type f
./mount_point

(Requires a fairly recent GNU findutils to reproduce, older ones
always call stat().) I've seen similar discussions about d_ino being
for the underlying file, not the mount point, which people have said
is technically a POSIX violation but also unlikely to be fixed. Is
the same true of d_type? And is there some workaround a program could
use to get the actual type without the overhead of a whole stat()
call? For example, a way to tell whether a directory entry is a mount
point?

For reference, the relevant findutils bug is
https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?54913.

(Please keep me cc'd, I'm not subscribed to lkml or fsdevel. Thanks!)

--
Tavian Barnes