ext4: atomically set inode->i_flags in ext4_set_inode_flags()

Use cmpxchg() to atomically set i_flags instead of clearing out the
S_IMMUTABLE, S_APPEND, etc. flags and then setting them from the
EXT4_IMMUTABLE_FL, EXT4_APPEND_FL flags, since this opens up a race
where an immutable file has the immutable flag cleared for a brief
window of time.

Reported-by: John Sullivan <jsrhbz@kanargh.force9.co.uk>
Signed-off-by: "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>
Cc: stable@kernel.org

1 files changed, 31 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/fs/inode.c b/fs/inode.c
index 4bcdad3c9361..26f95ceb6250 100644
--- a/fs/inode.c
+++ b/fs/inode.c
@@ -1899,3 +1899,34 @@ void inode_dio_done(struct inode *inode)
                 wake_up_bit(&inode->i_state, __I_DIO_WAKEUP);
 }
 EXPORT_SYMBOL(inode_dio_done);
+
+/*
+ * inode_set_flags - atomically set some inode flags
+ *
+ * Note: the caller should be holding i_mutex, or else be sure that
+ * they have exclusive access to the inode structure (i.e., while the
+ * inode is being instantiated).  The reason for the cmpxchg() loop
+ * --- which wouldn't be necessary if all code paths which modify
+ * i_flags actually followed this rule, is that there is at least one
+ * code path which doesn't today --- for example,
+ * __generic_file_aio_write() calls file_remove_suid() without holding
+ * i_mutex --- so we use cmpxchg() out of an abundance of caution.
+ *
+ * In the long run, i_mutex is overkill, and we should probably look
+ * at using the i_lock spinlock to protect i_flags, and then make sure
+ * it is so documented in include/linux/fs.h and that all code follows
+ * the locking convention!!
+ */
+void inode_set_flags(struct inode *inode, unsigned int flags,
+                     unsigned int mask)
+{
+        unsigned int old_flags, new_flags;
+
+        WARN_ON_ONCE(flags & ~mask);
+        do {
+                old_flags = ACCESS_ONCE(inode->i_flags);
+                new_flags = (old_flags & ~mask) | flags;
+        } while (unlikely(cmpxchg(&inode->i_flags, old_flags,
+                                  new_flags) != old_flags));
+}
+EXPORT_SYMBOL(inode_set_flags);