Re: [PATCH] init/do_mounts.c: Add root="fstag:<tag>" syntax for root device

[Vivek Goyal]

On Sun, Jun 13, 2021 at 08:56:11PM +0900, Dominique Martinet wrote:
> Dominique Martinet wrote on Thu, Jun 10, 2021 at 05:33:34PM +0900:
> > Stefan Hajnoczi wrote on Thu, Jun 10, 2021 at 09:16:38AM +0100:
> > > virtio-9p should be simple. I'm not sure how much additional setup the
> > > other 9p transports require. TCP and RDMA seem doable if there are
> > > kernel parameters to configure things before the root file system is
> > > mounted.
> > 
> > For TCP, we can probably piggyback on what nfs does for this, see the
> > ip= parameter in Documentation/admin-guide/nfs/nfsroot.rst -- it lives
> > in net/ipv4/ipconfig.c so should just work out of the box
> 
> Hm, just tried and it doesn't quite work for some reason -- in this
> stack trace:
>  kthread_should_stop+0x71/0xb0
>  wait_woken+0x182/0x1c0
>  __inet_stream_connect+0x48a/0xc00
>  inet_stream_connect+0x53/0xa0
>  p9_fd_create_tcp+0x2d6/0x420
>  p9_client_create+0x7bc/0x11d0
>  v9fs_session_init+0x1cd/0x1220
>  v9fs_mount+0x8c/0x870
>  legacy_get_tree+0xef/0x1d0
>  vfs_get_tree+0x83/0x240
>  path_mount+0xda3/0x1800
>  init_mount+0x98/0xdd
>  do_mount_root+0xe0/0x255
>  mount_root+0x47/0xd7
>  prepare_namespace+0x136/0x165
>  kernel_init+0xd/0x123
>  ret_from_fork+0x22/0x30
> 
> current->set_child_tid is null, causing a null deref when checking
> &to_kthread(current)->flags
> 
> It does work with nfsroot though so even if this doesn't look 9p
> specific I guess I'll need to debug that eventually, but this can
> be done later... I'm guessing they don't use the same connect() function
> as 9p's is ipv4-specific (ugh) and that needs fixing eventually anyway.
> 
> For reference this is relevant part of kernel command line I used for
> tcp:
> root=fstag:x.y.z.t rootflags=trans=tcp,aname=rootfs rootfstype=9p ip=dhcp
> 
> (and ip=dhcp requires CONFIG_IP_PNP_DHCP=y)
> 
> 
> 
> Virtio does work quite well though and that's good enough for me -- I
> was going to suggest also documenting increasing the msize (setting
> e.g. rootflags=msize=262144) but we really ought to increase the
> default, that came up recently and since no patch was sent I kind of
> forgot... Will do that now.
> 
> 
> 
> @Vivek - I personally don't really care much, but would tend to prefer
> your v2 (without fstag:) from a user perspective the later is definitely
> better but I don't really like the static nobdev_filesystems array --

I am not a big fan of nobdev_filesystems array but I really don't feel
comfortable opening up this code by default to all filesystems having
flag FS_REQUIRES_DEV. Use cases of this code path are not well documented
and something somewhere will be broken and called regression.

I think nobdev_filesystems is sort of a misfit. Even mtd, ubi, cifs
and nfs are nobdev filesystems but they are not covered by this.

May be this array needs to be called say "tag_based_rootfs[]" and
array entries can be gated by config options from filesystems.

#ifdef CONFIG_VIRTIO_FS
  "virtiofs",
#endif
#ifdef CONFIG_FOO
  "foo",
#endif

Now all the filesystems which want to simply pass a "tag" as source of
mount to filesystem directly during mount can opt-in into this.
virtiofs and 9p are the first two filesystmes to opt-in. And then
flow of mount code becomes much more clean.

Is it mtd or ubi device
   mount mtd/ubi root
Is it nfs/cifs device
   mount nfs/cifs root
Is it tag based fs
   mount tag based fs
else
   mount block device based fs. 

Calling it nobdev based fs makes it too generic while we are not
covering all the cases.

So my personal perference is that just to carve out a new class
of rootfs (tag based) and let users opt in if they fit into
this class. This kind of approach also reduces risk of any 
regression significantly.

I don't know enough about mtd/ubi but I suspect that it might be
possible that they can make use of this option as well.

> I'd bite the bullet and use FS_REQUIRES_DEV (and move this part of the
> code just a bit below after the root_wait check just in case it matters,

Problem with moving this below root_wait check is that if user boots
with root_wait option for virtiofs/9p, it will loop infitely. Reason
being that ROOT_DEV=0 and device will never show up.

I am assuming that for out use cases, device will need to be present
at the time of boot. We can't have a notion of waiting for device to
show up.

> but at that point if something would mount with /dev/root but not with
> the raw root=argument then they probably do require a device!)
> 
> It could also be gated by a config option like e.g. CONFIG_ROOT_NFS and
> others all are to make sure it doesn't impact anyone who doesn't want to
> be impacted - I'm sure some people want to make sure their device
> doesn't boot off a weird root if someone manages to change kernel params
> so would want a way of disabling the option...

I guess I could do that. Given more than one filesystem will use this
option (virtiofs and 9p to begin with), so we will have to have a 
config option name which is little more generic and not filesystem
specific like CONFIG_ROOT_NFS or CONFIG_ROOT_CIFS.

> 
> 
> Well, if you keep the array, please add 9p to the list and resend as a
> proper patch so I can reply with tested-by/reviewed-by tags on something
> more final.

Sure, I will add 9p to list.

> 
> 
> Also, matter-of-factedly, how is this going to be picked up?
> Is the plan to send it directly to Linus as part of the next virtiofs
> PR? Going through Al Viro?

I was hoping that this patch can be routed through Al Viro.

Thanks
Vivek