Re: v9fs does not honor open file handles on anonymous files

[Richard Yao]

On 12/31/2013 02:41 PM, Dominique Martinet wrote:
> Hi,

Thanks for the fast reply.

> Richard Yao wrote on Tue, Dec 31, 2013 :
>> #!/bin/bash
>> cat <<-EOF
>> EOF
>>
>> Running this causes bash to fork via clone(), set fd=0 to point to an
>> empty file in /tmp, unlink it and then execve cat. Specifically,
>> something like this;
>>
>> [pid  3699] open("/tmp/sh-thd-1388524249",
>> O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_EXCL|O_TRUNC, 0600) = 3
>> [pid  3699] open("/tmp/sh-thd-1388524249", O_RDONLY) = 4
>> [pid  3699] close(3)                    = 0
>> [pid  3699] unlink("/tmp/sh-thd-1388524249") = 0
>> [pid  3699] dup2(4, 0)                  = 0
>> [pid  3699] close(4)                    = 0
>> [pid  3699] execve("/bin/cat", ["cat"], [/* 22 vars */]) = 0
>>
>> It seems that v9fs_vfs_unlink() is killing the file while we still have
>> open file handles. I have confirmed that this behavior occurs on Linux
>> 3.13.0-rc6. This breaks several things when Gentoo is on a 9p rootfs
>> (e.g. gcc-config, any emerge command that involves a C compiler,
>> etcetera) inside QEMU. I have placed /tmp and /var/tmp/portage on a
>> tmpfs as a hack-fix, but it would be better to get this fixed.
>>
>> I doubt that I will write a patch to fix this. I am sending the details
>> to the list so the 9p maintainers or any other interested individual can
>> fix it.
> 
> I'm not sure if it is the client's job to remember the file has been
> unlinked and only really unlink it after all the file handles are closed
> or if we should expect the server to do it.

The answer to this is largely philosophical in nature, but it is a good
question to ask. Quite honestly, I have no preference, but I was not
sure who was responsible. Having caught another bug that I thought was
in QEMU that turned out to be in Linux, I decided to ping the Linux
folks first this time.

Speaking of which, that patch did not get much attention because I did
not send it to the right lists. I will resend it soon:

http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-virtualization/msg21716.html

> It might not matter in the case of qemu acting as a 9p server, but there
> are a couple of network 9p2000.L servers out there (diod[1] and
> nfs-ganesha[2]), and if the file is open on one client and unlinked on
> another client.. How can the second client wait properly?
> 
> For what's it's worth, nfs-ganesha already behaves properly and this
> will work with /tmp being a 9P mount off it.
> 
> 
> It might be worth looking into qemu's code and see if it wouldn't be
> easy to hold the unlink ? I've got to admit I honestly have no clue
> there.
> (or at least send them a copy of your mail :))


If nfs-ganesha handles this properly, then I am going to say this is
QEMU's bug. I had CCed Aneesh, who I am told is responsible for the QEMU
9p code, so hopefully we will hear from him soon. Otherwise, I will
resend to the QEMU list.

> 
> [1] diod "Distributed I/O daemon" - http://code.google.com/p/diod/
> [2] nfs-ganesha - https://github.com/nfs-ganesha/nfs-ganesha
> 
> 
> Cheers,
>

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