Linux filesystems cannot set extra file attributes (stx_attributes as per
statx(2)) on a symbolic link as ioctl(2) with FS_IOC_SETFLAGS is used for
this purpose, and *all* ioctl(2) calls on a symbolic link yield EBADF.
This is because ioctl(2) tries to obtain struct fd from the symbolic link
file descriptor passed using fdget(), fdget() in turn always returns no
file set when a file descriptor is open with O_PATH. As per symlink(2)
O_PATH and O_NOFOLLOW must *always* be used when you want to get the file
descriptor of a symbolic link, and this holds true for Linux, as such extra
file attributes cannot possibly be set on symbolic links on Linux.
Given this Linux filesystems should treat extra file attributes set on
symbolic links as corruption and fix them.
The TL;DR:
How I discovered this was finding a corrupted filesystem with symbolic
links with the extra file attribute append (STATX_ATTR_APPEND) set. Symbolic
links with the attribute append set cannot be removed as they are treated as
if a file was set with the immutable flag set. Standard tools however cannot
remove *any* attribute flag:
# chattr -a symlink
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on b
If you end up with these symbolic links userspace cannot remove them.
Likewise one cannot use the same tool to *set* this extra file attribute on
a symbolic link using chattr:
# rm -f y z
# ln -s y z
# chattr +a z
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on z
What makes this puzzling was one cannot even list attributes on symlinks
using lsattr either:
# rm -f a b
# ln -s a b
# lsattr b
lsattr: Operation not supported While reading flags on b
The above was due to commit 023d111e92195 ("chattr.1.in: Document the
compression attribute flags E, X, and ...") merged on e2fsprogs v1.28 since
August 2002. That commit just refers to the fact that attributes were only
allowed after that commit for directories and regular files due to Debian
bug 152029 [0]. This bug was filed since lsattr lsattr would segfault when
used against a special file of an old DRM buggy driver, the ioctl seem to
have worked but crashed lsattr with its information. The bug report doesn't
list any specific reasoning for not allowing attributes on symlinks though.
Crafting your own tool to query the extra file attributes with the new
shiny statx(2) works, and if a symbolic link has the extra attribute
flag set statx(2) would inform userspace of this. statx(2) is only used
for getting file information, not for setting them.
This all meant that if you end up with the append extra file attribute
set on a symlink you need special tools to try to remove it and currently
that's only possible on XFS with xfs_db [1] [2].
Fix XFS filesystems which have these extra file attributes set as the only
way they could have been set was through corruption.
[0] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=152029
[1] xfs_db -x -c 'inode inode-number' -c 'write core.append 1' /dev/device
[2] xfs_db -x -c 'inode inode-number' -c 'write core.append 0' /dev/device
Cc: Tso Ted <tytso@xxxxxxx>
Cc: Nikolay Borisov <nborisov@xxxxxxxx>
Cc: Flex Liu <fliu@xxxxxxxx>
Cc: Jake Norris <jake.norris@xxxxxxxx>
Cc: Jan Kara <jack@xxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Luis R. Rodriguez <mcgrof@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
On this v2 I've provided a much better explanation as to why these
extra file attributes don't make sense on Linux, and trimmed the flags
we venture out to clear to *only* match what statx defines. It may be
possible to clear more dino->di_flags and maybe even dino->di_flags2
for symbolic links however that those be determined separately as the
other flags' semantics are clarified for setting.
repair/dinode.c | 21 +++++++++++++++++++++
1 file changed, 21 insertions(+)
diff --git a/repair/dinode.c b/repair/dinode.c
index 15ba8cc22b39..6288e42de15e 100644
--- a/repair/dinode.c
+++ b/repair/dinode.c
@@ -2482,6 +2482,27 @@ _("bad (negative) size %" PRId64 " on inode %" PRIu64 "\n"),
FS_XFLAG_EXTSIZE);
}
}
+ if (flags & (XFS_DIFLAG_IMMUTABLE | XFS_DIFLAG_APPEND |
+ XFS_DIFLAG_NODUMP)) {
+ /*
+ * ioctl(fd, *) and so ioctl(fd, FS_IOC_SETFLAGS)
+ * yields EBADF on symlinks as they have O_PATH set.
+ * "Extra file attributes", stx_attributes, as per
+ * statx(2) cannot be set on symlinks on Linux.
+ */
+ if (di_mode && S_ISLNK(di_mode) &&
+ !S_ISREG(di_mode) && !S_ISDIR(di_mode)) {
+ if (!uncertain) {
+ do_warn(
+ _("file or directory attributes set on symlink inode %" PRIu64 "\n"),
+ lino);
+ }
+ flags &= ~(XFS_DIFLAG_IMMUTABLE |
+ XFS_DIFLAG_APPEND |
+ XFS_DIFLAG_NODUMP);
+ }
+ }
+
if (!verify_mode && flags != be16_to_cpu(dino->di_flags)) {
if (!no_modify) {
do_warn(_("fixing bad flags.\n"));
--
2.14.2
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