Date:   Sat, 16 Sep 2023 10:19:02 +0800
From:   Ian Kent <raven@...maw.net>
To:     Amir Goldstein <amir73il@...il.com>
Cc:     Miklos Szeredi <mszeredi@...hat.com>,
        linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-api@...r.kernel.org, linux-man@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-security-module@...r.kernel.org, Karel Zak <kzak@...hat.com>,
        David Howells <dhowells@...hat.com>,
        Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Al Viro <viro@...iv.linux.org.uk>,
        Christian Brauner <christian@...uner.io>
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH 0/3] quering mount attributes

On 15/9/23 11:06, Amir Goldstein wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 15, 2023 at 4:20 AM Ian Kent <raven@...maw.net> wrote:
>> On 14/9/23 14:47, Amir Goldstein wrote:
>>> On Wed, Sep 13, 2023 at 6:22 PM Miklos Szeredi <mszeredi@...hat.com> wrote:
>>>> Implement the mount querying syscalls agreed on at LSF/MM 2023.  This is an
>>>> RFC with just x86_64 syscalls.
>>>>
>>>> Excepting notification this should allow full replacement for
>>>> parsing /proc/self/mountinfo.
>>> Since you mentioned notifications, I will add that the plan discussed
>>> in LFSMM was, once we have an API to query mount stats and children,
>>> implement fanotify events for:
>>> mount [mntuid] was un/mounted at [parent mntuid],[dirfid+name]
>>>
>>> As with other fanotify events, the self mntuid and dirfid+name
>>> information can be omitted and without it, multiple un/mount events
>>> from the same parent mntuid will be merged, allowing userspace
>>> to listmnt() periodically only mntuid whose child mounts have changed,
>>> with little risk of event queue overflow.
>>>
>>> The possible monitoring scopes would be the entire mount namespace
>>> of the monitoring program or watching a single mount for change in
>>> its children mounts. The latter is similar to inotify directory children watch,
>>> where the watches needs to be set recursively, with all the weight on
>>> userspace to avoid races.
>> It's been my belief that the existing notification mechanisms don't
>> quite fully satisfy the needs of users of these calls (aka. the need
>> I found when implementing David's original calls into systemd).
>>
>> Specifically the ability to process a batch of notifications at once.
>>
>> Admittedly the notifications mechanism that David originally implemented
>> didn't fully implement what I found I needed but it did provide for a
>> settable queue length and getting a batch of notifications at a time.
>>
>> Am I mistaken in my belief?
>>
> I am not sure I understand the question.
>
> fanotify has an event queue (16K events by default), but it can
> also use unlimited size.
> With a limited size queue, event queue overflow generates an
> overflow event.
>
> event listeners can read a batch of events, depending on
> the size of the buffer that they provide.

So it sounds like I can get a bunch of events at once with fanotify.

I'll have to look at the code again ...


Ian

>
> when multiple events with same information are queued,
> for example "something was un/mounted over parent mntuid 100"
> fanotify will merged those all those events in the queue and the
> event listeners will get only one such event in the batch.
>
>> Don't misunderstand me, it would be great for the existing notification
>> mechanisms to support these system calls, I just have a specific use case
>> in mind that I think is important, at least to me.
>>
> Please explain the use case and your belief about existing fanotify
> limitations. I did not understand it.
>
> Thanks,
> Amir.

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