Re: new ...at() flag: AT_NO_JUMPS

On Thu, May 04, 2017 at 06:27:10PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:

As mentioned last time, at least for the git usage, even relative
symlinks are a no-no - not because they'd escape, but simply because
git wants to see the *unique* name, and resolve relative symlinks to
either the symlink, or to the actual file it points to.

So I think that we'd want an additional flag that says "no symlinks at all".

OK, that's easily done.

And I think the "no mountpoint" traversal might be splittable too.

Yes, sometimes you'd probably want to say "stay exactly inside this
filesystem" (like find -xdev). So no arguments against AT_XDEV that
refuses any mount traversal (kind of like my "no symlink traversal"
thing).

But at other points you might want to just guarantee that the walk
stays below a certain starting point and doesn't escape.

That could still allow crossing mount-points, but only if they are
non-bind mounts and cannot let us escape.

I'm not sure if that's testable, though.

This one isn't, unfortunately - there is no difference between bind and
no-bind; vfsmounts form a tree and both normal mount and bind add leaves
to it.  Moreover, mount -t ext2 /dev/sdc7 /mnt; mount -t ext2 /dev/sdc7 /tmp/a
yield the same state as mount -t ext2 /dev/sdc7; mount --bind /mnt /tmp/a.
There is no way to tell the difference, simply because there *is* no
difference.  Moreover, either can be followed by umount /mnt and you'll get
the same state as you would have after a solitary mount of the same fs on
/tmp/a.

Ho-hum...  So:

			AT_BENEATH	AT_XDEV		AT_NO_SYMLINKS
absolute pathname:	EXDEV
non-relative symlink:	EXDEV		?		ELOOP
relative symlink:					ELOOP
.. from starting point:	EXDEV
.. crossing mountpoint:			EXDEV
crossing into mountpoint:		EXDEV

1) What should AT_XDEV do about absolute symlinks?  Nothing special?  EXDEV?
EXDEV if we are not on root?
2) What should AT_BENEATH | AT_NO_SYMLINKS do on absolute symlinks?  My
preference would be "AT_NO_SYMLINKS wins, ELOOP for you", but that's based
mostly upon the convenience of implementation.
3) What effect should AT_NO_SYMLINKS have upon the final component?  Same
as AT_SYMLINK_NOFOLLOW?