This is a note to let you know that I've just added the patch titled fs: Teach path_connected to handle nfs filesystems with multiple roots. to the 4.9-stable tree which can be found at: http://www.kernel.org/git/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/stable-queue.git;a=summary The filename of the patch is: fs-teach-path_connected-to-handle-nfs-filesystems-with-multiple-roots.patch and it can be found in the queue-4.9 subdirectory. If you, or anyone else, feels it should not be added to the stable tree, please let <stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> know about it. >From 95dd77580ccd66a0da96e6d4696945b8cea39431 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@xxxxxxxxxxxx> Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2018 18:20:29 -0500 Subject: fs: Teach path_connected to handle nfs filesystems with multiple roots. From: Eric W. Biederman <ebiederm@xxxxxxxxxxxx> commit 95dd77580ccd66a0da96e6d4696945b8cea39431 upstream. On nfsv2 and nfsv3 the nfs server can export subsets of the same filesystem and report the same filesystem identifier, so that the nfs client can know they are the same filesystem. The subsets can be from disjoint directory trees. The nfsv2 and nfsv3 filesystems provides no way to find the common root of all directory trees exported form the server with the same filesystem identifier. The practical result is that in struct super s_root for nfs s_root is not necessarily the root of the filesystem. The nfs mount code sets s_root to the root of the first subset of the nfs filesystem that the kernel mounts. This effects the dcache invalidation code in generic_shutdown_super currently called shrunk_dcache_for_umount and that code for years has gone through an additional list of dentries that might be dentry trees that need to be freed to accomodate nfs. When I wrote path_connected I did not realize nfs was so special, and it's hueristic for avoiding calling is_subdir can fail. The practical case where this fails is when there is a move of a directory from the subtree exposed by one nfs mount to the subtree exposed by another nfs mount. This move can happen either locally or remotely. With the remote case requiring that the move directory be cached before the move and that after the move someone walks the path to where the move directory now exists and in so doing causes the already cached directory to be moved in the dcache through the magic of d_splice_alias. If someone whose working directory is in the move directory or a subdirectory and now starts calling .. from the initial mount of nfs (where s_root == mnt_root), then path_connected as a heuristic will not bother with the is_subdir check. As s_root really is not the root of the nfs filesystem this heuristic is wrong, and the path may actually not be connected and path_connected can fail. The is_subdir function might be cheap enough that we can call it unconditionally. Verifying that will take some benchmarking and the result may not be the same on all kernels this fix needs to be backported to. So I am avoiding that for now. Filesystems with snapshots such as nilfs and btrfs do something similar. But as the directory tree of the snapshots are disjoint from one another and from the main directory tree rename won't move things between them and this problem will not occur. Cc: stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Reported-by: Al Viro <viro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Fixes: 397d425dc26d ("vfs: Test for and handle paths that are unreachable from their mnt_root") Signed-off-by: "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@xxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Al Viro <viro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- fs/namei.c | 5 +++-- fs/nfs/super.c | 2 ++ include/linux/fs.h | 1 + 3 files changed, 6 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) --- a/fs/namei.c +++ b/fs/namei.c @@ -578,9 +578,10 @@ static int __nd_alloc_stack(struct namei static bool path_connected(const struct path *path) { struct vfsmount *mnt = path->mnt; + struct super_block *sb = mnt->mnt_sb; - /* Only bind mounts can have disconnected paths */ - if (mnt->mnt_root == mnt->mnt_sb->s_root) + /* Bind mounts and multi-root filesystems can have disconnected paths */ + if (!(sb->s_iflags & SB_I_MULTIROOT) && (mnt->mnt_root == sb->s_root)) return true; return is_subdir(path->dentry, mnt->mnt_root); --- a/fs/nfs/super.c +++ b/fs/nfs/super.c @@ -2613,6 +2613,8 @@ struct dentry *nfs_fs_mount_common(struc /* initial superblock/root creation */ mount_info->fill_super(s, mount_info); nfs_get_cache_cookie(s, mount_info->parsed, mount_info->cloned); + if (!(server->flags & NFS_MOUNT_UNSHARED)) + s->s_iflags |= SB_I_MULTIROOT; } mntroot = nfs_get_root(s, mount_info->mntfh, dev_name); --- a/include/linux/fs.h +++ b/include/linux/fs.h @@ -1319,6 +1319,7 @@ struct mm_struct; #define SB_I_CGROUPWB 0x00000001 /* cgroup-aware writeback enabled */ #define SB_I_NOEXEC 0x00000002 /* Ignore executables on this fs */ #define SB_I_NODEV 0x00000004 /* Ignore devices on this fs */ +#define SB_I_MULTIROOT 0x00000008 /* Multiple roots to the dentry tree */ /* sb->s_iflags to limit user namespace mounts */ #define SB_I_USERNS_VISIBLE 0x00000010 /* fstype already mounted */ Patches currently in stable-queue which might be from ebiederm@xxxxxxxxxxxx are queue-4.9/fs-teach-path_connected-to-handle-nfs-filesystems-with-multiple-roots.patch queue-4.9/userns-don-t-fail-follow_automount-based-on-s_user_ns.patch