Better interop for NFS/SMB file share mode/reservation

Amir Goldstein amir73il at gmail.com
Sun Apr 28 13:45:50 UTC 2019


On Sun, Apr 28, 2019 at 8:09 AM Jeff Layton <jlayton at kernel.org> wrote:
>
> On Sat, 2019-04-27 at 16:16 -0400, Amir Goldstein wrote:
> > [adding back samba/nfs and fsdevel]
> >
>
> cc'ing Pavel too -- he did a bunch of work in this area a few years ago.
>
> > On Fri, Apr 26, 2019 at 6:22 PM Jeff Layton <jlayton at kernel.org> wrote:
> > > On Fri, 2019-04-26 at 10:50 -0400, J. Bruce Fields wrote:
> > > > On Fri, Apr 26, 2019 at 04:11:00PM +0200, Amir Goldstein wrote:
> > > > > On Fri, Apr 26, 2019, 4:00 PM J. Bruce Fields <bfields at fieldses.org> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > > On Fri, Apr 26, 2019 at 03:50:46PM +0200, Amir Goldstein wrote:
> > > > > > > On Fri, Feb 8, 2019, 5:03 PM Jeff Layton <jlayton at kernel.org> wrote:
> > > > > > > > Share/deny open semantics are pretty similar across NFS and SMB (by
> > > > > > > > design, really). If you intend to solve that use-case, what you really
> > > > > > > > want is whole-file, shared/exclusive locks that are set atomically with
> > > > > > > > the open call. O_EXLOCK and O_SHLOCK seem like a reasonable fit there.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Then you could have SMB and NFS servers set these flags when opening
> > > > > > > > files, and deal with the occasional denial at open time. Other
> > > > > > > > applications won't be aware of them of course, but that's probably fine
> > > > > > > > for most use-cases where you want this sort of protocol interop.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Sorry for posting off list. Airport emails...
> > > > > > > I looked at implemeting O_EXLOCK and O_SHLOCK and it looks doable.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > I was wondering if there is an inherent reason not to allow an exclusive
> > > > > > > lock on a file that is open read-only.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Samba seems to need it and currently flock and ofd locks won't allow it.
> > > > > > > Do you thing it will be ok to allow it with O_EXLOCK?
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Somebody could deny everyone access to a shared resource that everyone
> > > > > > needs to make progress, like /etc/passwd or a shared library.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Have you looked at Pavel Shilovsky's O_DENY patches?  He had the feature
> > > > > > off by default, with a mount option provided to turn it on.
> > > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > O_EXLOCK is advisory. It only aquired flock or ofd lock atomically with
> > > > > open.
> > > >
> > > > Whoops, got it.
> > > >
> > > > Is that really adequate for open share locks, though?
> > > >
> > > > I assumed that Windows apps depend on the assumption that they're
> > > > mandatory.  So e.g. if you can get a DENY_READ open on a shared library
> > > > then you know you can update it without the risk of making someone else
> > > > crash.
> > > >
> > >
> > > I think this is (slightly) better than doing it internally like we do
> > > today and would give you coherent locking between NFS and SMB. Other
> > > applications wouldn't see them, but for a NAS-style deployment, that's
> > > probably ok.
> > >
> >
> > We can do a little bit better.
> > We can make sure that O_DENY_WRITE (named for convenience) fails
> > if file is currently open for write by anyone and similarly for O_DENY_READ.
> > But if we cannot deny future non-cooperative opens what's the point?....
> >
>
> As you said in another mail, the main interest here is in getting
> NFS+SMB semantics right. If the exported filesystem is _only_ available
> via NFS+SMB, then do we need to deny non-cooperative opens?
>

We do not.

> > > Any open by samba or nfsd would need to start setting O_SHLOCK, and deny
> > > mode opens would have to set O_EXLOCK. We would actually need 2 per
> > > inode though (one for read and one for write).
> > >
> >
> > ...the point is that O_DENY_NONE does not need to be implemented with
> > a new type of lock object (O_WR_SHLOCK) its enough that it checks there
> > are no relevant exclusive locks and the then inode->i_writecount and
> > inode->i_readcount already provide enough context to cooperate with
> > O_DENY_WRITE and O_DENY_READ.
> >
>
> That would work, if the goal is to have deny modes affect all opens. We
> could also do this on the opt-in basis that I was suggesting with a new
> set of counters in struct file_lock_context.
>

Ok.

> > I need to see if incrementing inode->i_readcount on O_RDWR opens is
> > possible (right now it only counts O_RDONLY opens).
> >
> > > I think these should probably be in their own "namespace" too. They
> > > could use the same semantics as flock, but should sit on their own list
> > > in file_lock_context.
> > >
> >
> > I would much rather that they didn't. The reason is that new open flags
> > are a backward compat problem. The way I want to solve it is this API:
> >
> > // On new kernel this will acquire OFD F_WRLCK atomically...
> > fd = open(..., O_RDWR | O_EXLOCK);
> > // ...check if it did acquire OFD lock
> > fcntl(fd,  F_OFD_GETLK, ...);
> >
> > We'd need at least one new l_type F_EX_RDLCK and maybe also a new
> > semantic F_EX_RDWRLCK, although similar in conflicts to F_WRLCK it can be
> > acquired without FMODE_WRITE. Though I personally thing we can do without
> > it if the only way to acquire F_WRLCK on readonly file is via new open flag.
> >
>
> I don't think that will work at all. Share/deny modes are entirely
> orthogonal to byte-range locks in both NFS and SMB. Consider:
>
> Two clients open a file with O_RDWR | | O_SHARE_WRITE | O_SHARE_READ.
> One of them now wants to set byte-range write lock on the file. That
> should be allowed, but now it'll be denied, because the other client
> will effectively hold a whole-file readlock on it.
>

Got it. flock semantics (as Pavel chose) are a better fit.
It only does not support O_SHARE_WRITE | O_DENY_READ naively,
but easy to add.

> There is also the problem that read and write deny modes are orthogonal
> to one other, so you have to have a way to deal with them independently.
>
> I'd suggest an API like this:
>
> // open read/write and deny read/write
> fd = open(..., O_RDWR | O_DENY_READ | O_DENY_WRITE);
> // test for flags with F_GETFL
> flags = fcntl(fd, F_GETFL);
>
> That would also allow you to use F_SETFL to change those flags on an
> existing fd.
>

Nice. If only old kernel wouldn't give out in F_GETFL any garbage flags
you piled on open.
That's why I wanted a different way to check if lock is taken and thought
of F_OFD_GETLK as a natural candidate.

We can play this game:

// New kernel doesn't copy O_TEST to f_flags
#define O_DENY_READ O_TEST | __O_DENY_READ
fd = open(..., O_RDWR | O_DENY_READ);
flags = fcntl(fd, F_GETFL);
if ((flags & O_DENY_READ) && !(flags & O_TEST))

A bit ugly, but if its wrapped in a library function
get_open_flags() who cares...

> > > That said, we could also look at a vfs-level mount option that would
> > > make the kernel enforce these for any opener. That could also be useful,
> > > and shouldn't be too hard to implement. Maybe even make it a vfsmount-
> > > level option (like -o ro is).
> > >
> >
> > Yeh, I am humbly going to leave this struggle to someone else.
> > Not important enough IMO and completely independent effort to the
> > advisory atomic open&lock API.
>
> Having the kernel allow setting deny modes on any open call is a non-
> starter, for the reasons Bruce outlined earlier. This _must_ be
> restricted in some fashion or we'll be opening up a ginormous DoS
> mechanism.
>
> My proposal was to make this only be enforced by applications that
> explicitly opt-in by setting O_SH*/O_EX* flags. It wouldn't be too
> difficult to also allow them to be enforced on a per-fs basis via mount
> option or something. Maybe we could expand the meaning of '-o mand' ?
>
> How would you propose that we restrict this?
>

Our communication channel is broken.
I did not intend to propose any implicit locking.
If samba and nfsd can opt-in with O_SHARE flags, I do not
understand why a mount option is helpful for the cause of
samba/nfsd interop.

If someone else is interested in samba/local interop than
yes, a mount option like suggested by Pavel could be a good option,
but it is an orthogonal effort IMO.


> > > If you're denied, what error should you get back when you try to open
> > > it? It should be something distinct. We may even want to add new error
> > > codes for this.
> >
> > IMO EBUSY does the job. Its distinct because open is not expected
> > to return EBUSY for regular files/dirs and when open is expected to
> > return EBUSY for blockdev its for the exact same use case (i.e.
> > exclusive write open is acquired by userspace tools).
>
> That works for me.

>From Pavel's v6 cover letter:
"Make nfs code return -EBUSY for share conflicts (was -EACCESS)."
;-)

>
> We should probably have a close look at the work that Pavel did several
> years ago too. It has almost certainly bitrotted by now, but it may
> serve as a starting point (and he may he may have valuable input here).

I looked at the patches. There's good stuff in there.
Once we agree on the specifications I can rip some code off ;-)

A lot of the work in Pavel's patches evolves around making the
mount option work and respecting O_DENYDELETE.
IMO, that is not a good use of up-streaming effort, because:
- NFS won't ask for deny delete
- IMO, Windows applications should be used to being denied
  a DENY_DELETE and fall back to SHARE_DELETE

So while implementing DENYDELETE may fall into a category of making
samba server behave more like Windows server, I don't think it falls into
the category of better samba/nfs interop.

It is something that we can add later if anyone really cares about.

Thanks,
Amir.



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