Message-ID: <78a5971a-822b-4eb4-9c3d-9c1011c5b479@oracle.com>
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2026 09:31:13 -0500
From: Chuck Lever <chuck.lever@...cle.com>
To: Jeff Layton <jlayton@...nel.org>, Christian Brauner <brauner@...nel.org>,
        Amir Goldstein <amir73il@...il.com>
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Subject: Re: [PATCH 00/24] vfs: require filesystems to explicitly opt-in to
 lease support

On 1/13/26 9:27 AM, Jeff Layton wrote:
> On Tue, 2026-01-13 at 09:03 -0500, Chuck Lever wrote:
>> On 1/13/26 6:45 AM, Jeff Layton wrote:
>>> On Tue, 2026-01-13 at 09:54 +0100, Christian Brauner wrote:
>>>> On Mon, Jan 12, 2026 at 09:50:20AM -0500, Jeff Layton wrote:
>>>>> On Mon, 2026-01-12 at 09:31 -0500, Chuck Lever wrote:
>>>>>> On 1/12/26 8:34 AM, Jeff Layton wrote:
>>>>>>> On Fri, 2026-01-09 at 19:52 +0100, Amir Goldstein wrote:
>>>>>>>> On Thu, Jan 8, 2026 at 7:57 PM Jeff Layton <jlayton@...nel.org> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> On Thu, 2026-01-08 at 18:40 +0100, Jan Kara wrote:
>>>>>>>>>> On Thu 08-01-26 12:12:55, Jeff Layton wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>> Yesterday, I sent patches to fix how directory delegation support is
>>>>>>>>>>> handled on filesystems where the should be disabled [1]. That set is
>>>>>>>>>>> appropriate for v6.19. For v7.0, I want to make lease support be more
>>>>>>>>>>> opt-in, rather than opt-out:
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> For historical reasons, when ->setlease() file_operation is set to NULL,
>>>>>>>>>>> the default is to use the kernel-internal lease implementation. This
>>>>>>>>>>> means that if you want to disable them, you need to explicitly set the
>>>>>>>>>>> ->setlease() file_operation to simple_nosetlease() or the equivalent.
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> This has caused a number of problems over the years as some filesystems
>>>>>>>>>>> have inadvertantly allowed leases to be acquired simply by having left
>>>>>>>>>>> it set to NULL. It would be better if filesystems had to opt-in to lease
>>>>>>>>>>> support, particularly with the advent of directory delegations.
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> This series has sets the ->setlease() operation in a pile of existing
>>>>>>>>>>> local filesystems to generic_setlease() and then changes
>>>>>>>>>>> kernel_setlease() to return -EINVAL when the setlease() operation is not
>>>>>>>>>>> set.
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> With this change, new filesystems will need to explicitly set the
>>>>>>>>>>> ->setlease() operations in order to provide lease and delegation
>>>>>>>>>>> support.
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> I mainly focused on filesystems that are NFS exportable, since NFS and
>>>>>>>>>>> SMB are the main users of file leases, and they tend to end up exporting
>>>>>>>>>>> the same filesystem types. Let me know if I've missed any.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> So, what about kernfs and fuse? They seem to be exportable and don't have
>>>>>>>>>> .setlease set...
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Yes, FUSE needs this too. I'll add a patch for that.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> As far as kernfs goes: AIUI, that's basically what sysfs and resctrl
>>>>>>>>> are built on. Do we really expect people to set leases there?
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> I guess it's technically a regression since you could set them on those
>>>>>>>>> sorts of files earlier, but people don't usually export kernfs based
>>>>>>>>> filesystems via NFS or SMB, and that seems like something that could be
>>>>>>>>> used to make mischief.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> AFAICT, kernfs_export_ops is mostly to support open_by_handle_at(). See
>>>>>>>>> commit aa8188253474 ("kernfs: add exportfs operations").
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> One idea: we could add a wrapper around generic_setlease() for
>>>>>>>>> filesystems like this that will do a WARN_ONCE() and then call
>>>>>>>>> generic_setlease(). That would keep leases working on them but we might
>>>>>>>>> get some reports that would tell us who's setting leases on these files
>>>>>>>>> and why.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> IMO, you are being too cautious, but whatever.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> It is not accurate that kernfs filesystems are NFS exportable in general.
>>>>>>>> Only cgroupfs has KERNFS_ROOT_SUPPORT_EXPORTOP.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> If any application is using leases on cgroup files, it must be some
>>>>>>>> very advanced runtime (i.e. systemd), so we should know about the
>>>>>>>> regression sooner rather than later.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I think so too. For now, I think I'll not bother with the WARN_ONCE().
>>>>>>> Let's just leave kernfs out of the set until someone presents a real
>>>>>>> use-case.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> There are also the recently added nsfs and pidfs export_operations.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I have a recollection about wanting to be explicit about not allowing
>>>>>>>> those to be exportable to NFS (nsfs specifically), but I can't see where
>>>>>>>> and if that restriction was done.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Christian? Do you remember?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> (cc'ing Chuck)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> FWIW, you can currently export and mount /sys/fs/cgroup via NFS. The
>>>>>>> directory doesn't show up when you try to get to it via NFSv4, but you
>>>>>>> can mount it using v3 and READDIR works. The files are all empty when
>>>>>>> you try to read them. I didn't try to do any writes.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Should we add a mechanism to prevent exporting these sorts of
>>>>>>> filesystems?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Even better would be to make nfsd exporting explicitly opt-in. What if
>>>>>>> we were to add a EXPORT_OP_NFSD flag that explicitly allows filesystems
>>>>>>> to opt-in to NFS exporting, and check for that in __fh_verify()? We'd
>>>>>>> have to add it to a bunch of existing filesystems, but that's fairly
>>>>>>> simple to do with an LLM.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> What's the active harm in exporting /sys/fs/cgroup ? It has to be done
>>>>>> explicitly via /etc/exports, so this is under the NFS server admin's
>>>>>> control. Is it an attack surface?
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Potentially?
>>>>>
>>>>> I don't see any active harm with exporting cgroupfs. It doesn't work
>>>>> right via nfsd, but it's not crashing the box or anything.
>>>>>
>>>>> At one time, those were only defined by filesystems that wanted to
>>>>> allow NFS export. Now we've grown them on filesystems that just want to
>>>>> provide filehandles for open_by_handle_at() and the like. nfsd doesn't
>>>>> care though: if the fs has export operations, it'll happily use them.
>>>>>
>>>>> Having an explicit "I want to allow nfsd" flag see ms like it might
>>>>> save us some headaches in the future when other filesystems add export
>>>>> ops for this sort of filehandle use.
>>>>
>>>> So we are re-hashing a discussion we had a few months ago (Amir was
>>>> involved at least).
>>>>
>>>
>>> Yep, I was lurking on it, but didn't have a lot of input at the time.
>>>
>>>> I don't think we want to expose cgroupfs via NFS that's super weird.
>>>> It's like remote partial resource management and it would be very
>>>> strange if a remote process suddenly would be able to move things around
>>>> in the cgroup tree. So I would prefer to not do this.
>>>>
>>>> So my preference would be to really sever file handles from the export
>>>> mechanism so that we can allow stuff like pidfs and nsfs and cgroupfs to
>>>> use file handles via name_to_handle_at() and open_by_handle_at() without
>>>> making them exportable.
>>>
>>> Agreed. I think we want to make NFS export be a deliberate opt-in
>>> decision that filesystem developers make.
>>
>> No objection, what about ksmbd, AFS, or Ceph?
>>
> 
> ksmbd doesn't have anything akin to an export_operations. I think it
> really has to rely on admins getting the share paths right when
> exporting. This is a bit simpler there though since SMB2 doesn't deal
> with filehandles.
> 
> AFS and Ceph in the kernel are clients. AFS isn't reexportable via NFS,
> but Ceph is. We'll need to preserve that ability.

Well I think my point is that "is this file system type exportable"
might be orthogonal to whether the FS offers a filehandle capability. If
it doesn't make sense to export cgroupfs via NFS, it probably also does
not make sense for ksmbd. Lather, rinse, repeat for other in-kernel file
servers.

Perhaps the "is_exportable" predicate is better placed separately from
export_ops.


-- 
Chuck Lever

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