Re: [PATCH RFC] vfs: add a O_NOMTIME flag

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"Sage" == Sage Weil [off-list ref] writes:

Sage> On Thu, 7 May 2015, Zach Brown wrote:

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On Thu, May 07, 2015 at 10:26:17AM +1000, Dave Chinner wrote:

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On Wed, May 06, 2015 at 03:00:12PM -0700, Zach Brown wrote:

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The criteria for using O_NOMTIME is the same as for using O_NOATIME:
owning the file or having the CAP_FOWNER capability.  If we're not
comfortable allowing owners to prevent mtime/ctime updates then we
should add a tunable to allow O_NOMTIME.  Maybe a mount option?

I dislike "turn off safety for performance" options because Joe
SpeedRacer will always select performance over safety.

Well, for ceph there's no safety concern.  They never use cmtime in
these files.

So are you suggesting not implementing this and making them rework their
IO paths to avoid the fs maintaining mtime so that we don't give Joe
Speedracer more rope?  Or are we talking about adding some speed bumps
that ceph can flip on that might give Joe Speedracer pause?

Sage> I think this is the fundamental question: who do we give the
Sage> ammunition to, the user or app writer, or the sysadmin?

Sage> One might argue that we gave the user a similar power with
Sage> O_NOATIME (the power to break applications that assume atime is
Sage> accurate).  Here we give developers/users the power to not
Sage> update mtime and suffer the consequences (like, obviously,
Sage> breaking mtime-based backups).  It should be pretty obvious to
Sage> anyone using the flag what the consequences are.

Not modifying atime doesn't really break anything except people who
think they can tell when a file was last accessed.  Which isn't
critical (unless your in a paranoid security conscious place...) but
MTIME is another beast entirely.   Turning that off is going to break
lots of hidden assumptions.  

Sage> Note that we can suffer similar lapses in mtime with fdatasync
Sage> followed by a system crash.  And as Andy points out it's
Sage> semi-broken for writable mmap.  The crash case is obviously a
Sage> slightly different thing, but the idea that mtime can't always
Sage> be trusted certainly isn't crazy talk.

True, but after a crash... people expect and understand there might be
corruption in a filesystem.  

Sage> Or, we can be conservative and require a mount option so that
Sage> the admin has to explicitly allow behavior that might break some
Sage> existing assumptions about mtime/ctime ('-o user_noatime' I
Sage> guess?).


Sage> I'm happy either way, so long as in the end an unprivileged ceph
Sage> daemon avoids the useless work.  In our case we always own the
Sage> entire mount/disk, so a mount option is just fine.

I agree with the mount option, makes it crystal clear.  And then it's
on the sysadmin/owner of the system to understand (ha!) the problems.

This is all me speaking with my Sysadmin hat firmly on my head.