Re: [PATCH] epoll: try to be a _bit_ better about file lifetimes

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>]

On Sun, 5 May 2024 at 03:50, Christian Brauner <brauner@kernel.org> wrote:
>
> And I agree with you that for some instances it's valid to take another
> reference to a file from f_op->poll() but then they need to use
> get_file_active() imho and simply handle the case where f_count is zero.

I think this is

 (a) practically impossible to find (since most f_count updates are in
various random helpers)

 (b) not tenable in the first place, since *EVERYBODY* does a f_count
update as part of the bog-standard pollwait

So (b) means that the notion of "warn if somebody increments f_count
from zero" is broken to begin with - but it's doubly broken because it
wouldn't find anything *anyway*, since this never happens in any
normal situation.

And (a) means that any non-automatic finding of this is practically impossible.

> And we need to document that in Documentation/filesystems/file.rst or
> locking.rst.

WHY?

Why cannot you and Al just admit that the problem is in epoll. Always
has been, always will be.

The fact is, it's not dma-buf that is violating any rules. It's epoll.
It's calling out to random driver functions with a file pointer that
is no longer valid.

It really is that simple.

I don't see why you are arguing for "unknown number of drivers - we
know at least *one* - have to be fixed for a bug that is in epoll".

If it was *easy* to fix, and if it was *easy* to validate, then  sure.
But that just isn't the case.

In contrast, in epoll it's *trivial* to fix the one case where it does
a VFS call-out, and just say "you have to follow the rules".

So explain to me again why you want to mess up the driver interface
and everybody who has a '.poll()' function, and not just fix the ONE
clearly buggy piece of code.

Because dammit,. epoll is clearly buggy. It's not enough to say "the
file allocation isn't going away", and claim that that means that it's
not buggy - when the file IS NO LONGER VALID!

                      Linus