Re: [PATCH v2] vfs: shave work on failed file open

[Mateusz Guzik]

On 9/27/23, Linus Torvalds <torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Wed, 27 Sept 2023 at 07:10, Christian Brauner <brauner@xxxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
>>
>> No need to resend I can massage this well enough in-tree.
>
> Hmm. Please do, but here's some more food for thought for at least the
> commit message.
>
> Because there's more than the "__fput_sync()" issue at hand, we have
> another delayed thing that this patch ends up short-circuiting, which
> wasn't obvious from the original description.
>
> I'm talking about the fact that our existing "file_free()" ends up
> doing the actual release with
>
>         call_rcu(&f->f_rcuhead, file_free_rcu);
>
> and the patch under discussion avoids that part too.
>

Comments in the patch explicitly mention dodgin RCU for the file object.

> And I actually like that it avoids it, I just think it should be
> mentioned explicitly, because it wasn't obvious to me until I actually
> looked at the old __fput() path. Particularly since it means that the
> f_creds are free'd synchronously now.
>

Well put_cred is called synchronously, but should this happen to be
the last ref on them, they will get call_rcu(&cred->rcu,
put_cred_rcu)'ed.

> I do think that's fine, although I forget what path it was that
> required that rcu-delayed cred freeing. Worth mentioning, and maybe
> worth thinking about.
>

See above. The only spot which which plays tricks with it is
faccessat, other than that all creds are explicitly freed with rcu.

> However, when I *did* look at it, it strikes me that we could do this
> differently.
>
> Something like this (ENTIRELY UNTESTED) patch, which just moves this
> logic into fput() itself.
>

I did not want to do it because failed open is a special case, quite
specific to one syscall (and maybe few others later).

As is you are adding a branch to all final fputs and are preventing
whacking that 1 -> 0 unref down the road, unless it gets moved out
again like in my patch.

-- 
Mateusz Guzik <mjguzik gmail.com>