linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH RESEND] splice: introduce FMODE_SPLICE_READ and FMODE_SPLICE

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Message-ID: <20170112091620.GV1555@ZenIV.linux.org.uk>
Date:   Thu, 12 Jan 2017 09:16:20 +0000
From:   Al Viro <viro@...IV.linux.org.uk>
To:     Jeff Layton <jlayton@...hat.com>
Cc:     Johannes Thumshirn <jthumshirn@...e.de>,
        "J . Bruce Fields" <bfields@...ldses.org>,
        linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        mbenes@...e.cz, jack@...e.cz
Subject: Re: [PATCH RESEND] splice: introduce FMODE_SPLICE_READ and
 FMODE_SPLICE_WRITE

On Wed, Jan 11, 2017 at 07:20:13AM -0500, Jeff Layton wrote:
> On Wed, 2017-01-11 at 10:51 +0100, Johannes Thumshirn wrote:
> > Introduce FMODE_SPLICE_READ and FMODE_SPLICE_WRITE. These modes check
> > whether it is legal to read or write a file using splice. Both get
> > automatically set on regular files and are not checked when a 'struct
> > fileoperations' includes the splice_{read,write} methods.
> > 
> 
> Could you add a description of the problem that this solves? I assume
> you hit a problem trying to splice to/from a non-regular file, but it'd
> be good to know what that problem was.

Insane ->write() instances, basically.  I'm not at all convinced that it's
a good idea - sure, we can go and mark sane ones as such one-by-one, but
it's a _lot_ of code churn and insane ones are very few.  Moreover, I would
argue that the right way to handle that is to reject any new instances of
that insanity - splice or no splice, write(2) that includes userland pointers
in payload and dereferences them is not fit to live.  /dev/sg, /dev/bsg
and infinibarf are examples of really bad APIs; sure, we can't kill them
off (at least /dev/sg is used by a bunch of userland programs and all of
them expect that semantics), but that doesn't excuse any new drivers trying
to introduce the same.