linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 2/2] block: create ioctl to discard-or-zeroout a range of blocks

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Date:	Fri, 11 Mar 2016 10:12:13 +0530
From:	Ric Wheeler <rwheeler@...hat.com>
To:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
Cc:	"Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@....edu>, Gregory Farnum <greg@...gs42.com>,
	Dave Chinner <david@...morbit.com>,
	"Martin K. Petersen" <martin.petersen@...cle.com>,
	Christoph Hellwig <hch@...radead.org>,
	"Darrick J. Wong" <darrick.wong@...cle.com>,
	Jens Axboe <axboe@...nel.dk>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Linux API <linux-api@...r.kernel.org>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	shane.seymour@....com, Bruce Fields <bfields@...ldses.org>,
	linux-fsdevel <linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Jeff Layton <jlayton@...chiereds.net>,
	Eric Sandeen <esandeen@...hat.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/2] block: create ioctl to discard-or-zeroout a range of
 blocks

On 03/11/2016 12:03 AM, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 6:58 AM, Ric Wheeler <ricwheeler@...il.com> wrote:
>> What was objectionable at the time this patch was raised years back (not
>> just to me, but to pretty much every fs developer at LSF/MM that year)
>> centered on the concern that this would be viewed as a "performance" mode
>> and we get pressure to support this for non-priveleged users. It gives any
>> user effectively the ability to read the block device content for previously
>> allocated data without restriction.
> The sane way to do it would be to just check permissions of the
> underlying block device.
>
> That way, people can just set the permissions for that to whatever
> they want. If google right now uses some magical group for this, they
> could make the underlying block device be writable for that group.
>
> We can do the security check at the filesystem level, because we have
> sb->s_bdev->bd_inode, and if you have read and write permissions to
> that inode, you might as well have permission to create a unsafe hole.
>
> That doesn't sound very hacky to me.
>
>                 Linus

I agree that this sounds quite reasonable.

Ric