[BUG] lseek on /proc/meminfo is broken in 4.19.59 maybe due to commit 1f4aace60b0e ("fs/seq_file.c: simplify seq_file iteration code and interface")

[Sergei Turchanov <turchanov@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello!

[
 As suggested in previous discussion this behavior may be caused by your
 commit 1f4aace60b0e ("fs/seq_file.c: simplify seq_file iteration code and interface")
]

Original bug report:

Seeking (to an offset within file size) in /proc/meminfo is broken in 4.19.59. It does seek to a desired position, but reading from that position returns the remainder of file and then a whole copy of file. This doesn't happen with /proc/vmstat or /proc/self/maps for example.

Seeking did work correctly in kernel 4.14.47. So it seems something broke in the way.

Background: this kind of access pattern (seeking to /proc/meminfo) is used by libvirt-lxc fuse driver for virtualized view of /proc/meminfo. So that /proc/meminfo is broken in guests when running kernel 4.19.x.

> On 01.08.2019 17:11, Gao Xiang wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I just took a glance, maybe due to
> commit 1f4aace60b0e ("fs/seq_file.c: simplify seq_file iteration code and interface")
>
> I simply reverted it just now and it seems fine... but I haven't digged into this commit.
>
> Maybe you could Cc NeilBrown <neilb@xxxxxxxx> for some more advice and
> I have no idea whether it's an expected behavior or not...
>
> Thanks,
> Gao Xiang
>
> On 2019/8/1 14:16, Sergei Turchanov wrote:


$ ./test /proc/meminfo 0        # Works as expected

MemTotal:       394907728 kB
MemFree:        173738328 kB
...
DirectMap2M:    13062144 kB
DirectMap1G:    390070272 kB

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

$ ./test /proc/meminfo 1024     # returns a copy of file after the remainder

Will seek to 1024


Data read at offset 1024
gePages:         0 kB
ShmemHugePages:        0 kB
ShmemPmdMapped:        0 kB
HugePages_Total:       0
HugePages_Free:        0
HugePages_Rsvd:        0
HugePages_Surp:        0
Hugepagesize:       2048 kB
Hugetlb:               0 kB
DirectMap4k:      245204 kB
DirectMap2M:    13062144 kB
DirectMap1G:    390070272 kB
MemTotal:       394907728 kB
MemFree:        173738328 kB
MemAvailable:   379989680 kB
Buffers:          355812 kB
Cached:         207216224 kB
...
DirectMap2M:    13062144 kB
DirectMap1G:    390070272 kB

As you see, after "DirectMap1G:" line, a whole copy of /proc/meminfo returned by "read".

Test program:

#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

#define SIZE 1024
char buf[SIZE + 1];

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
    int     fd;
    ssize_t rd;
    off_t   ofs = 0;

    if (argc < 2) {
        printf("Usage: test <file> [<offset>]\n");
        exit(1);
    }

    if (-1 == (fd = open(argv[1], O_RDONLY))) {
        perror("open failed");
        exit(1);
    }

    if (argc > 2) {
        ofs = atol(argv[2]);
    }
    printf("Will seek to %ld\n", ofs);

    if (-1 == (lseek(fd, ofs, SEEK_SET))) {
        perror("lseek failed");
        exit(1);
    }

    for (;; ofs += rd) {
        printf("\n\nData read at offset %ld\n", ofs);
        if (-1 == (rd = read(fd, buf, SIZE))) {
            perror("read failed");
            exit(1);
        }
        buf[rd] = '\0';
        printf(buf);
        if (rd < SIZE) {
            break;
        }
    }

    return 0;
}