From: Jens Axboe on
On Thu, Apr 08 2010, Nikanth Karthikesan wrote:
> Update mtime when writing to backing filesystem using the address space
> operations write_begin and write_end.

You forgot to include a 'why' :-)

Not that I disagree with the patch, just curious what made you make the
change.

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Jens Axboe

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From: Tvrtko Ursulin on
On Thursday 08 April 2010 13:45:39 Jens Axboe wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 08 2010, Nikanth Karthikesan wrote:
> > Update mtime when writing to backing filesystem using the address space
> > operations write_begin and write_end.
>
> You forgot to include a 'why' :-)
>
> Not that I disagree with the patch, just curious what made you make the
> change.

You mean how the bug was found? I originally reported this problem against
openSUSE 11.2 kernel, where when you have a dm-crypt loop filesystem the
container file modification time does not get updated with use. Consequence
of that is that backup runs would miss the fact container has changed.

Maybe one could argue it is a security feature in this scenario :), but as the
problem turns out to be unrelated to the crypto case, rather contained in the
loop driver itself, it looks like that would not hold.

Tvrtko

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From: Jens Axboe on
On Thu, Apr 08 2010, Tvrtko Ursulin wrote:
> On Thursday 08 April 2010 13:45:39 Jens Axboe wrote:
> > On Thu, Apr 08 2010, Nikanth Karthikesan wrote:
> > > Update mtime when writing to backing filesystem using the address space
> > > operations write_begin and write_end.
> >
> > You forgot to include a 'why' :-)
> >
> > Not that I disagree with the patch, just curious what made you make the
> > change.
>
> You mean how the bug was found? I originally reported this problem against
> openSUSE 11.2 kernel, where when you have a dm-crypt loop filesystem the
> container file modification time does not get updated with use. Consequence
> of that is that backup runs would miss the fact container has changed.
>
> Maybe one could argue it is a security feature in this scenario :), but as the
> problem turns out to be unrelated to the crypto case, rather contained in the
> loop driver itself, it looks like that would not hold.

:-)

I suppose you could update the mtime on tear down, since then it would
also be safe to actually backup. But same difference in the end I
suppose, I'll add the patch.

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Jens Axboe

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From: Nikanth Karthikesan on
On Friday 09 April 2010 01:08:38 Jens Axboe wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 08 2010, Tvrtko Ursulin wrote:
> > On Thursday 08 April 2010 13:45:39 Jens Axboe wrote:
> > > On Thu, Apr 08 2010, Nikanth Karthikesan wrote:
> > > > Update mtime when writing to backing filesystem using the address
> > > > space operations write_begin and write_end.
> > >
> > > You forgot to include a 'why' :-)
> > >
> > > Not that I disagree with the patch, just curious what made you make the
> > > change.
> >

Sorry, for the bad terse changelog.

> > You mean how the bug was found? I originally reported this problem
> > against openSUSE 11.2 kernel, where when you have a dm-crypt loop
> > filesystem the container file modification time does not get updated with
> > use. Consequence of that is that backup runs would miss the fact
> > container has changed.
> >
> > Maybe one could argue it is a security feature in this scenario :), but
> > as the problem turns out to be unrelated to the crypto case, rather
> > contained in the loop driver itself, it looks like that would not hold.
> >
> :-)
>
> I suppose you could update the mtime on tear down, since then it would
> also be safe to actually backup. But same difference in the end I
> suppose, I'll add the patch.
>

If we update mtime only during tear down, we might miss to backup after a
system crash or scenarios where the loop device is not deleted after use
during backup. Also when relatime is used, it is better to change mtime on
time. :-)

Thanks for taking the patch.

Thanks
Nikanth
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