RE: [PATCH 0/2] iter revert problems

[David Laight <David.Laight@ACULAB.COM>]

From: Al Viro
> Sent: 09 August 2021 16:53
> 
> On Mon, Aug 09, 2021 at 12:52:35PM +0100, Pavel Begunkov wrote:
> > For the bug description see 2/2. As mentioned there the current problems
> > is because of generic_write_checks(), but there was also a similar case
> > fixed in 5.12, which should have been triggerable by normal
> > write(2)/read(2) and others.
> >
> > It may be better to enforce reexpands as a long term solution, but for
> > now this patchset is quickier and easier to backport.
> 
> 	Umm...  Won't that screw the cases where we *are* doing proper
> reexpands?  AFAICS, with your patches that flag doesn't go away once
> it had been set...

From what I remember the pointer into the iov[] gets incremented
as it is processed - which makes 'backing up' hard.
The caller also has to remember the original pointer because
it might point to kmalloced memory.

So if the 'iter' always contained a pointer to the base of the iov[]
then various bits of code could be simplified.

Another useful change would be to embed the short iov_cache[8]
inside 'iter'.
Almost all the callers allocate both together (usually on stack)
so the stack use won't change.
I have local patches for most of this (somewhere) but the io_uring
changes start being non-trivial.

	David

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