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authorLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2026-08-30 09:22:00 -0700
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2026-08-30 09:22:00 -0700
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Merge tag 'trace-v7.3-2' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/trace/linux-tracegrafted
Pull tracing fixes from Steven Rostedt: - Fix error output of boot instance creation failure Currently if a boot instance creation fails, instead of printing out the name of the instance that failed, it prints "(null)". That is because it prints "cur_str" that had already been processed by strsep(). Print the saved name instead. While at it, print the error code of the failure. - Fix use-after-free for same named historgrams Histograms can be named so that they can be used in multiple events. But if the named histogram has a variable attached, the second event that uses the named histogram which duplicates it and needs to free the original after duplication leaves the old variable in place and still visible. If another histogram uses than variable, it will use the stale one which will try to reference the freed duplicate histogram and crash the kernel. Free the duplicate variables along with the duplicated histogram data. - Check return value of kthread_run() in event self test The events self tests uses a kthread for testing but does not check if it succeeded in creating a kthread. If the kthread creation were to fail, the code will still try to call kthread_stop() on the error returned. - Fix race between reading trace_pipe and updating subbuffer size If a user is reading the trace_pipe file at the same time they update the ring buffer sub-buffer size, can cause the trace_pipe read to read stale data. Add trace_access_lock() around updating the ring buffer sub-buffer size. - Fix eventfs_inode on failure path in creation of the events directory In the creation of the "events" directory, if after allocating the eventfs_inode a failure is detected, it calls cleanup_ei() which calls free_ei(). The free_ei() will test if eventfs_inode being freed has no children. It is a bug if it does. But on the failure case of the creation of the "events" directory, the children lists have not yet been initialized and the free will trigger a warning because list_empty() on an uninitialized list returns false. Move the initialization into init_ei() where it makes more sense and makes sure that a created eventfs_inode has its lists initialized upon creation. - Check return value of kthread_run() in ftrace direct sample code The sample code that shows how to use the ftrace direct calls does not test the return of kthread_run() to see if it succeeds. Return a failure if the kthread_run() doesn't succeed. - Clear user events state on fork in case of alloc failure On fork, the child gets a pointer to the parent's user events state. It makes a copy of it then updates the child's pointer to it. But if the allocation fails, the duplication function leaves the child with a pointer to its parent's descriptor. When the child cleans up its data, it will free the parent's descriptor while the parent is still using it. In the duplication function, set the child's user_event_mm to NULL before testing if the allocation succeeded, and when it exits it will not free the parent's descriptor. - Fix retry exhaustion in simple ring buffer reader swap simple_ring_buffer_swap_reader_page() starts with retry set to 8 and post-decrements it only after a failed link replacement. On the final attempt, a successful replacement leaves retry at zero, while a failed replacement leaves it at -1. But the check for success expects the retry value to be non-zero and exits with an error on zero. This is the opposite result. Fix it. - Fail nicely when the remote swap_reader_page() returns an error Currently, if the swap_reader_page() of a remote buffer fails, it triggers a WARN_ON_ONCE() and continues normally. Instead, have it exit with an error and a pr_warn() print instead of a full WARNING. * tag 'trace-v7.3-2' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/trace/linux-trace: ring-buffer: Stop remote reader update when page swap fails tracing: Fix retry exhaustion in simple ring buffer reader swap tracing/user_events: Clear copied tracing state before fork duplication samples/ftrace: Fix kthread_stop() on ERR_PTR in ftrace-direct-multi-modify samples/ftrace: Fix kthread_stop() on ERR_PTR in ftrace-direct-modify eventfs: Initialize ei->children and ei->list in init_ei() tracing: Fix use-after-free in trace_pipe read on sub-buffer order change tracing: Fix crash passing ERR_PTR to kthread_stop() tracing: Fix use-after-free with same-name named triggers tracing: Fix logged instance name on creation failure
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+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
+
+=============
+FUSE Overview
+=============
+
+Definitions
+===========
+
+Userspace filesystem:
+ A filesystem in which data and metadata are provided by an ordinary
+ userspace process. The filesystem can be accessed normally through
+ the kernel interface.
+
+Filesystem daemon:
+ The process(es) providing the data and metadata of the filesystem.
+
+Non-privileged mount (or user mount):
+ A userspace filesystem mounted by a non-privileged (non-root) user.
+ The filesystem daemon is running with the privileges of the mounting
+ user. NOTE: this is not the same as mounts allowed with the "user"
+ option in /etc/fstab, which is not discussed here.
+
+Filesystem connection:
+ A connection between the filesystem daemon and the kernel. The
+ connection exists until either the daemon dies, or the filesystem is
+ umounted. Note that detaching (or lazy umounting) the filesystem
+ does *not* break the connection, in this case it will exist until
+ the last reference to the filesystem is released.
+
+Mount owner:
+ The user who does the mounting.
+
+User:
+ The user who is performing filesystem operations.
+
+What is FUSE?
+=============
+
+FUSE is a userspace filesystem framework. It consists of a kernel
+module (fuse.ko), a userspace library (libfuse.*) and a mount utility
+(fusermount).
+
+One of the most important features of FUSE is allowing secure,
+non-privileged mounts. This opens up new possibilities for the use of
+filesystems. A good example is sshfs: a secure network filesystem
+using the sftp protocol.
+
+The userspace library and utilities are available from the
+`FUSE homepage: <https://github.com/libfuse/>`_
+
+Filesystem type
+===============
+
+The filesystem type given to mount(2) can be one of the following:
+
+ fuse
+ This is the usual way to mount a FUSE filesystem. The first
+ argument of the mount system call may contain an arbitrary string,
+ which is not interpreted by the kernel.
+
+ fuseblk
+ The filesystem is block device based. The first argument of the
+ mount system call is interpreted as the name of the device.
+
+Mount options
+=============
+
+fd=N
+ The file descriptor to use for communication between the userspace
+ filesystem and the kernel. The file descriptor must have been
+ obtained by opening the FUSE device ('/dev/fuse').
+
+rootmode=M
+ The file mode of the filesystem's root in octal representation.
+
+user_id=N
+ The numeric user id of the mount owner.
+
+group_id=N
+ The numeric group id of the mount owner.
+
+default_permissions
+ By default FUSE doesn't check file access permissions, the
+ filesystem is free to implement its access policy or leave it to
+ the underlying file access mechanism (e.g. in case of network
+ filesystems). This option enables permission checking, restricting
+ access based on file mode. It is usually useful together with the
+ 'allow_other' mount option.
+
+allow_other
+ This option overrides the security measure restricting file access
+ to the user mounting the filesystem. This option is by default only
+ allowed to root, but this restriction can be removed with a
+ (userspace) configuration option.
+
+max_read=N
+ With this option the maximum size of read operations can be set.
+ The default is infinite. Note that the size of read requests is
+ limited anyway to 32 pages (which is 128kbyte on i386).
+
+blksize=N
+ Set the block size for the filesystem. The default is 512. This
+ option is only valid for 'fuseblk' type mounts.
+
+Control filesystem
+==================
+
+There's a control filesystem for FUSE, which can be mounted by::
+
+ mount -t fusectl none /sys/fs/fuse/connections
+
+Mounting it under the '/sys/fs/fuse/connections' directory makes it
+backwards compatible with earlier versions.
+
+Under the fuse control filesystem each connection has a directory
+named by a unique number.
+
+For each connection the following files exist within this directory:
+
+ waiting
+ The number of requests which are waiting to be transferred to
+ userspace or being processed by the filesystem daemon. If there is
+ no filesystem activity and 'waiting' is non-zero, then the
+ filesystem is hung or deadlocked.
+
+ abort
+ Writing anything into this file will abort the filesystem
+ connection. This means that all waiting requests will be aborted an
+ error returned for all aborted and new requests.
+
+ max_background
+ The maximum number of background requests that can be outstanding
+ at a time. When the number of background requests reaches this limit,
+ further requests will be blocked until some are completed, potentially
+ causing I/O operations to stall.
+
+ congestion_threshold
+ The threshold of background requests at which the kernel considers
+ the filesystem to be congested. When the number of background requests
+ exceeds this value, the kernel will skip asynchronous readahead
+ operations, reducing read-ahead optimizations but preserving essential
+ I/O, as well as suspending non-synchronous writeback operations
+ (WB_SYNC_NONE), delaying page cache flushing to the filesystem.
+
+Only the owner of the mount may read or write these files.
+
+Interrupting filesystem operations
+##################################
+
+If a process issuing a FUSE filesystem request is interrupted, the
+following will happen:
+
+ - If the request is not yet sent to userspace AND the signal is
+ fatal (SIGKILL or unhandled fatal signal), then the request is
+ dequeued and returns immediately.
+
+ - If the request is not yet sent to userspace AND the signal is not
+ fatal, then an interrupted flag is set for the request. When
+ the request has been successfully transferred to userspace and
+ this flag is set, an INTERRUPT request is queued.
+
+ - If the request is already sent to userspace, then an INTERRUPT
+ request is queued.
+
+INTERRUPT requests take precedence over other requests, so the
+userspace filesystem will receive queued INTERRUPTs before any others.
+
+The userspace filesystem may ignore the INTERRUPT requests entirely,
+or may honor them by sending a reply to the *original* request, with
+the error set to EINTR.
+
+It is also possible that there's a race between processing the
+original request and its INTERRUPT request. There are two possibilities:
+
+ 1. The INTERRUPT request is processed before the original request is
+ processed
+
+ 2. The INTERRUPT request is processed after the original request has
+ been answered
+
+If the filesystem cannot find the original request, it should wait for
+some timeout and/or a number of new requests to arrive, after which it
+should reply to the INTERRUPT request with an EAGAIN error. In case
+1) the INTERRUPT request will be requeued. In case 2) the INTERRUPT
+reply will be ignored.
+
+Aborting a filesystem connection
+================================
+
+It is possible to get into certain situations where the filesystem is
+not responding. Reasons for this may be:
+
+ a) Broken userspace filesystem implementation
+
+ b) Network connection down
+
+ c) Accidental deadlock
+
+ d) Malicious deadlock
+
+(For more on c) and d) see later sections)
+
+In either of these cases it may be useful to abort the connection to
+the filesystem. There are several ways to do this:
+
+ - Kill the filesystem daemon. Works in case of a) and b)
+
+ - Kill the filesystem daemon and all users of the filesystem. Works
+ in all cases except some malicious deadlocks
+
+ - Use forced umount (umount -f). Works in all cases but only if
+ filesystem is still attached (it hasn't been lazy unmounted)
+
+ - Abort filesystem through the FUSE control filesystem. Most
+ powerful method, always works.
+
+How do non-privileged mounts work?
+==================================
+
+Since the mount() system call is a privileged operation, a helper
+program (fusermount) is needed, which is installed setuid root.
+
+The implication of providing non-privileged mounts is that the mount
+owner must not be able to use this capability to compromise the
+system. Obvious requirements arising from this are:
+
+ A) mount owner should not be able to get elevated privileges with the
+ help of the mounted filesystem
+
+ B) mount owner should not get illegitimate access to information from
+ other users' and the super user's processes
+
+ C) mount owner should not be able to induce undesired behavior in
+ other users' or the super user's processes
+
+How are requirements fulfilled?
+===============================
+
+ A) The mount owner could gain elevated privileges by either:
+
+ 1. creating a filesystem containing a device file, then opening this device
+
+ 2. creating a filesystem containing a suid or sgid application, then executing this application
+
+ The solution is not to allow opening device files and ignore
+ setuid and setgid bits when executing programs. To ensure this
+ fusermount always adds "nosuid" and "nodev" to the mount options
+ for non-privileged mounts.
+
+ B) If another user is accessing files or directories in the
+ filesystem, the filesystem daemon serving requests can record the
+ exact sequence and timing of operations performed. This
+ information is otherwise inaccessible to the mount owner, so this
+ counts as an information leak.
+
+ The solution to this problem will be presented in point 2) of C).
+
+ C) There are several ways in which the mount owner can induce
+ undesired behavior in other users' processes, such as:
+
+ 1) mounting a filesystem over a file or directory which the mount
+ owner could otherwise not be able to modify (or could only
+ make limited modifications).
+
+ This is solved in fusermount, by checking the access
+ permissions on the mountpoint and only allowing the mount if
+ the mount owner can do unlimited modification (has write
+ access to the mountpoint, and mountpoint is not a "sticky"
+ directory)
+
+ 2) Even if 1) is solved the mount owner can change the behavior
+ of other users' processes.
+
+ i) It can slow down or indefinitely delay the execution of a
+ filesystem operation creating a DoS against the user or the
+ whole system. For example a suid application locking a
+ system file, and then accessing a file on the mount owner's
+ filesystem could be stopped, and thus causing the system
+ file to be locked forever.
+
+ ii) It can present files or directories of unlimited length, or
+ directory structures of unlimited depth, possibly causing a
+ system process to eat up diskspace, memory or other
+ resources, again causing *DoS*.
+
+ The solution to this as well as B) is not to allow processes
+ to access the filesystem, which could otherwise not be
+ monitored or manipulated by the mount owner. Since if the
+ mount owner can ptrace a process, it can do all of the above
+ without using a FUSE mount, the same criteria as used in
+ ptrace can be used to check if a process is allowed to access
+ the filesystem or not.
+
+ Note that the *ptrace* check is not strictly necessary to
+ prevent C/2/i, it is enough to check if mount owner has enough
+ privilege to send signal to the process accessing the
+ filesystem, since *SIGSTOP* can be used to get a similar effect.
+
+I think these limitations are unacceptable?
+===========================================
+
+If a sysadmin trusts the users enough, or can ensure through other
+measures, that system processes will never enter non-privileged
+mounts, it can relax the last limitation in several ways:
+
+ - With the 'user_allow_other' config option. If this config option is
+ set, the mounting user can add the 'allow_other' mount option which
+ disables the check for other users' processes.
+
+ User namespaces have an unintuitive interaction with 'allow_other':
+ an unprivileged user - normally restricted from mounting with
+ 'allow_other' - could do so in a user namespace where they're
+ privileged. If any process could access such an 'allow_other' mount
+ this would give the mounting user the ability to manipulate
+ processes in user namespaces where they're unprivileged. For this
+ reason 'allow_other' restricts access to users in the same userns
+ or a descendant.
+
+ - With the 'allow_sys_admin_access' module option. If this option is
+ set, super user's processes have unrestricted access to mounts
+ irrespective of allow_other setting or user namespace of the
+ mounting user.
+
+Note that both of these relaxations expose the system to potential
+information leak or *DoS* as described in points B and C/2/i-ii in the
+preceding section.
+
+Kernel - userspace interface
+============================
+
+The following diagram shows how a filesystem operation (in this
+example unlink) is performed in FUSE. ::
+
+
+ | "rm /mnt/fuse/file" | FUSE filesystem daemon
+ | |
+ | | >sys_read()
+ | | >fuse_dev_read()
+ | | >request_wait()
+ | | [sleep on fc->waitq]
+ | |
+ | >sys_unlink() |
+ | >fuse_unlink() |
+ | [get request from |
+ | fc->unused_list] |
+ | >request_send() |
+ | [queue req on fc->pending] |
+ | [wake up fc->waitq] | [woken up]
+ | >request_wait_answer() |
+ | [sleep on req->waitq] |
+ | | <request_wait()
+ | | [remove req from fc->pending]
+ | | [copy req to read buffer]
+ | | [add req to fc->processing]
+ | | <fuse_dev_read()
+ | | <sys_read()
+ | |
+ | | [perform unlink]
+ | |
+ | | >sys_write()
+ | | >fuse_dev_write()
+ | | [look up req in fc->processing]
+ | | [remove from fc->processing]
+ | | [copy write buffer to req]
+ | [woken up] | [wake up req->waitq]
+ | | <fuse_dev_write()
+ | | <sys_write()
+ | <request_wait_answer() |
+ | <request_send() |
+ | [add request to |
+ | fc->unused_list] |
+ | <fuse_unlink() |
+ | <sys_unlink() |
+
+.. note:: Everything in the description above is greatly simplified
+
+There are a couple of ways in which to deadlock a FUSE filesystem.
+Since we are talking about unprivileged userspace programs,
+something must be done about these.
+
+**Scenario 1 - Simple deadlock**::
+
+ | "rm /mnt/fuse/file" | FUSE filesystem daemon
+ | |
+ | >sys_unlink("/mnt/fuse/file") |
+ | [acquire inode semaphore |
+ | for "file"] |
+ | >fuse_unlink() |
+ | [sleep on req->waitq] |
+ | | <sys_read()
+ | | >sys_unlink("/mnt/fuse/file")
+ | | [acquire inode semaphore
+ | | for "file"]
+ | | *DEADLOCK*
+
+The solution for this is to allow the filesystem to be aborted.
+
+**Scenario 2 - Tricky deadlock**
+
+
+This one needs a carefully crafted filesystem. It's a variation on
+the above, only the call back to the filesystem is not explicit,
+but is caused by a pagefault. ::
+
+ | Kamikaze filesystem thread 1 | Kamikaze filesystem thread 2
+ | |
+ | [fd = open("/mnt/fuse/file")] | [request served normally]
+ | [mmap fd to 'addr'] |
+ | [close fd] | [FLUSH triggers 'magic' flag]
+ | [read a byte from addr] |
+ | >do_page_fault() |
+ | [find or create page] |
+ | [lock page] |
+ | >fuse_readpage() |
+ | [queue READ request] |
+ | [sleep on req->waitq] |
+ | | [read request to buffer]
+ | | [create reply header before addr]
+ | | >sys_write(addr - headerlength)
+ | | >fuse_dev_write()
+ | | [look up req in fc->processing]
+ | | [remove from fc->processing]
+ | | [copy write buffer to req]
+ | | >do_page_fault()
+ | | [find or create page]
+ | | [lock page]
+ | | * DEADLOCK *
+
+The solution is basically the same as above.
+
+An additional problem is that while the write buffer is being copied
+to the request, the request must not be interrupted/aborted. This is
+because the destination address of the copy may not be valid after the
+request has returned.
+
+This is solved with doing the copy atomically, and allowing abort
+while the page(s) belonging to the write buffer are faulted with
+get_user_pages(). The 'req->locked' flag indicates when the copy is
+taking place, and abort is delayed until this flag is unset.