ovl: warn if trusted xattr creation fails

When mounting overlayfs in an unprivileged user namespace, trusted xattr
creation will fail.  This will lead to failures in some file operations,
e.g. in the following situation:

  mkdir lower upper work merged
  mkdir lower/directory
  mount -toverlay -olowerdir=lower,upperdir=upper,workdir=work none merged
  rmdir merged/directory
  mkdir merged/directory

The last mkdir will fail:

  mkdir: cannot create directory 'merged/directory': Input/output error

The cause for these failures is currently extremely non-obvious and hard to
debug.  Hence, warn the user and suggest using the userxattr mount option,
if it is not already supplied and xattr creation fails during the
self-check.

Reported-by: Alois Wohlschlager <alois1@gmx-topmail.de>
Signed-off-by: Miklos Szeredi <mszeredi@redhat.com>

diff --git a/fs/overlayfs/super.c b/fs/overlayfs/super.c
index 1ce5c9698393731229d0a083cc1d7b4bad51c1e5..4c20961302094b68f1956cc4013936ad08e18308 100644 (file)
--- a/fs/overlayfs/super.c
+++ b/fs/overlayfs/super.c
@@ -1418,11 +1418,12 @@ static int ovl_make_workdir(struct super_block *sb, struct ovl_fs *ofs,
         */
        err = ovl_setxattr(ofs, ofs->workdir, OVL_XATTR_OPAQUE, "0", 1);
        if (err) {
+               pr_warn("failed to set xattr on upper\n");
                ofs->noxattr = true;
                if (ofs->config.index || ofs->config.metacopy) {
                        ofs->config.index = false;
                        ofs->config.metacopy = false;
-                       pr_warn("upper fs does not support xattr, falling back to index=off,metacopy=off.\n");
+                       pr_warn("...falling back to index=off,metacopy=off.\n");
                }
                /*
                 * xattr support is required for persistent st_ino.
@@ -1430,8 +1431,10 @@ static int ovl_make_workdir(struct super_block *sb, struct ovl_fs *ofs,
                 */
                if (ofs->config.xino == OVL_XINO_AUTO) {
                        ofs->config.xino = OVL_XINO_OFF;
-                       pr_warn("upper fs does not support xattr, falling back to xino=off.\n");
+                       pr_warn("...falling back to xino=off.\n");
                }
+               if (err == -EPERM && !ofs->config.userxattr)
+                       pr_info("try mounting with 'userxattr' option\n");
                err = 0;
        } else {
                ovl_removexattr(ofs, ofs->workdir, OVL_XATTR_OPAQUE);