bugfindutils - Bugs: bug #54913, find: "-type"-test wrong...

 
 

bug #54913: find: "-type"-test wrong on bind-mounted char device

Submitter:  Andreas Metzler <ametzler>
Submitted:  Mon 29 Oct 2018 05:59:31 PM UTC
   
 
Category:  find Severity:  3 - Normal
Item Group:  Wrong result Status:  None
Privacy:  Public Assigned to:  berny
Originator Name:  Mathieu Parent Open/Closed:  Open
Release:  None Fixed Release:  None
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Fri 02 Nov 2018 01:49:04 PM UTC, comment #5: 

Linux has similar behaviour about d_ino, returning the inode number from the parent filesystem rather than the mount point itself.  This is a POSIX violation, but there's little interest in fixing it: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/linux.kernel/4rzZRWKWT9c  For similar reasons, I expect this behaviour won't change in the Linux kernel :(

So what to do?  It's quite the pessimization to require stat() for -type.  (Technically -type d can be answered without stat() because directories can only be mounted over directories.)  I think trusting d_type for everything except mount points is a good idea.

Tavian Barnes <tavianator>
Thu 01 Nov 2018 07:01:07 PM UTC, comment #4: 

What a pity: that code - to use the D_TYPE returned from gnulib's FTS - has
been added to avoid an extra stat() when getdents() already returns it:
https://git.sv.gnu.org/cgit/findutils.git/commit/?id=acb82fe

[adding Jim as the patch author]

The fix would be to undo this:

--- a/find/ftsfind.c
+++ b/find/ftsfind.c
@@ -579,8 +579,9 @@ find (char *arg)

          state.already_issued_stat_error_msg = false;
          state.have_stat = false;
-         state.have_type = !!ent->fts_statp->st_mode;
-         state.type = state.have_type ? ent->fts_statp->st_mode : 0;
+         state.have_type = false;
+         state.type = 0;
+
          consider_visiting (p, ent);
        }
       /* fts_read returned NULL; distinguish between "finished" and "error". */


... but to the cost of performance again, because FTS usually returns
FTS_NSOK for all non-directory files (see "find -D search").
E.g. on NFS, that extra stat() would be quite slow ... and only needed
for that quite special and therefore seldom case of bind-mounts.

The only alternative I can currently think of is to check the mountlist
for the given ent->fts_path before not taking over the FTS information.

Any other idea to avoid the performance punishment?

Bernhard Voelker <berny>
Group administrator
Thu 01 Nov 2018 04:49:47 PM UTC, comment #3: 

yes, getdents returns d_type=DT_REG, while the later newfstatat - needed for the -ls action - returns st_mode=S_IFCHR:


getdents(4, [
  {d_ino=319425, d_off=1, d_reclen=24, d_name=".", d_type=DT_DIR},
  {d_ino=13363,  d_off=2, d_reclen=24, d_name="..", d_type=DT_DIR},
  {d_ino=322564, d_off=3, d_reclen=40, d_name="bindmntoverfile", d_type=DT_REG},
  {d_ino=319462, d_off=4, d_reclen=24, d_name="null", d_type=DT_CHR}], 32768) = 112
...
newfstatat(5, "bindmntoverfile", {
  st_dev=makedev(0, 21),
  st_ino=319462,
  st_mode=S_IFCHR|0644,
  st_nlink=1,
  st_uid=0,
  st_gid=0,
  st_blksize=4096,
  st_blocks=0,
  st_rdev=makedev(1, 3),
  st_atime=1540884672 /* 2018-10-30T08:31:12.131190660+0100 */, st_atime_nsec=131190660,
  st_mtime=1540884672 /* 2018-10-30T08:31:12.131190660+0100 */, st_mtime_nsec=131190660,
  st_ctime=1540884672 /* 2018-10-30T08:31:12.131190660+0100 */, st_ctime_nsec=131190660},
  AT_SYMLINK_NOFOLLOW) = 0


At least this is not an FTS regression, as 'oldfind' suffered from the same issue.

Bernhard Voelker <berny>
Group administrator
Wed 31 Oct 2018 08:57:18 PM UTC, comment #2: 

So this issue basically happens because d_type comes from the parent filesystem right?  Honestly this kernel behavior seems suboptimal to me.  If it's too expensive to resolve d_type from the bind mount, it could at least return DT_UNKNOWN.

Tavian Barnes <tavianator>
Tue 30 Oct 2018 11:18:26 PM UTC, comment #1: 

Nice catch - and a surprising use case of bind mounts!

And it's interesting that the output of the -ls action shows
the correct type again - of course, because that needs to do an
additional stat() on the file.

FWIW: this issue happens with all non-directory bind-mounts
on top of another type, e.g.
- socket -> regfile,
- regfile -> socket,
- character file -> socket
and so on.

I'll have to check if the change is done on the right place;
similar adjustment based on ent->ftsinfo are also in consider_visiting().

Furthermore, I'd like to get the coreutils-style test-framework
from gnulib into findutils, so that we could also have tests
like for this issue which require 'root' permissions.

Bernhard Voelker <berny>
Group administrator
Mon 29 Oct 2018 05:59:31 PM UTC, original submission:  

Hello,

this was reported as https://bugs.debian.org/912180 by Mathieu Parent. He also provided the attached to fix the issue. I have verified the bug, and that the patch makes the issue unreproducible.
-----------------
Hi,

The following testcase:

mkdir foo
mknod foo/null c 1 3
touch foo/bindmntoverfile
mount --bind foo/null foo/bindmntoverfile
find foo -type f -ls
3857271640      0 crw-r--r--   1 root     root       1,   3 Oct 24
07:50 foo/bindmntoverfile

i.e "-type f" wrongly matches a char device.

The attached patch fixes this.

Regards

Mathieu Parent

Andreas Metzler <ametzler>

 

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Attach Files:
   
   
Comment:
   

Attached Files
file #45323:  0001-Ensure-type-is-checked-with-FTS_NSOK-and-FTS_NS.patch added by ametzler (1KiB - text/x-diff - Patch provided in Debian report)

 

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    Follow 4 latest changes.

    Date Changed by Updated Field Previous Value => Replaced by
    2018-11-01 berny Carbon-Copy- Added meyering
    2018-10-31 ametzler Carbon-CopyRemoved 20807 -
    2018-10-30 berny Assigned toNone berny
    2018-10-29 ametzler Attached File- Added 0001-Ensure-type-is-checked-with-FTS_NSOK-and-FTS_NS.patch, #45323

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