fscrypt: document symlink length restriction

Document that encryption reduces the maximum length of a symlink target
slightly.

Signed-off-by: Eric Biggers <ebiggers@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>

1 files changed, 8 insertions, 2 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/fscrypt.rst b/Documentation/filesystems/fscrypt.rst
index 776ddc655f79..cfbc18f0d9c9 100644
--- a/Documentation/filesystems/fscrypt.rst
+++ b/Documentation/filesystems/fscrypt.rst
@@ -448,8 +448,14 @@ astute users may notice some differences in behavior:
 
 - The st_size of an encrypted symlink will not necessarily give the
   length of the symlink target as required by POSIX.  It will actually
-  give the length of the ciphertext, which may be slightly longer than
-  the plaintext due to the NUL-padding.
+  give the length of the ciphertext, which will be slightly longer
+  than the plaintext due to NUL-padding and an extra 2-byte overhead.
+
+- The maximum length of an encrypted symlink is 2 bytes shorter than
+  the maximum length of an unencrypted symlink.  For example, on an
+  EXT4 filesystem with a 4K block size, unencrypted symlinks can be up
+  to 4095 bytes long, while encrypted symlinks can only be up to 4093
+  bytes long (both lengths excluding the terminating null).
 
 Note that mmap *is* supported.  This is possible because the pagecache
 for an encrypted file contains the plaintext, not the ciphertext.