mount: add a comment about concurrent changes with statmount()/listmount()

Add some comments in there highlighting a few non-obvious assumptions.

Link: https://lore.kernel.org/20250416-zerknirschen-aluminium-14a55639076f@brauner
Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner <brauner@kernel.org>

1 files changed, 23 insertions, 3 deletions

diff --git a/fs/namespace.c b/fs/namespace.c
index 14935a0500a2..ddb0a688633c 100644
--- a/fs/namespace.c
+++ b/fs/namespace.c
@@ -5831,13 +5831,29 @@ static int do_statmount(struct kstatmount *s, u64 mnt_id, u64 mnt_ns_id,
 		return err;
 
 	s->root = root;
-	s->idmap = mnt_idmap(s->mnt);
-	if (s->mask & STATMOUNT_SB_BASIC)
-		statmount_sb_basic(s);
 
+	/*
+	 * Note that mount properties in mnt->mnt_flags, mnt->mnt_idmap
+	 * can change concurrently as we only hold the read-side of the
+	 * namespace semaphore and mount properties may change with only
+	 * the mount lock held.
+	 *
+	 * We could sample the mount lock sequence counter to detect
+	 * those changes and retry. But it's not worth it. Worst that
+	 * happens is that the mnt->mnt_idmap pointer is already changed
+	 * while mnt->mnt_flags isn't or vica versa. So what.
+	 *
+	 * Both mnt->mnt_flags and mnt->mnt_idmap are set and retrieved
+	 * via READ_ONCE()/WRITE_ONCE() and guard against theoretical
+	 * torn read/write. That's all we care about right now.
+	 */
+	s->idmap = mnt_idmap(s->mnt);
 	if (s->mask & STATMOUNT_MNT_BASIC)
 		statmount_mnt_basic(s);
 
+	if (s->mask & STATMOUNT_SB_BASIC)
+		statmount_sb_basic(s);
+
 	if (s->mask & STATMOUNT_PROPAGATE_FROM)
 		statmount_propagate_from(s);
 
@@ -6149,6 +6165,10 @@ SYSCALL_DEFINE4(listmount, const struct mnt_id_req __user *, req,
 	    !ns_capable_noaudit(ns->user_ns, CAP_SYS_ADMIN))
 		return -ENOENT;
 
+	/*
+	 * We only need to guard against mount topology changes as
+	 * listmount() doesn't care about any mount properties.
+	 */
 	scoped_guard(rwsem_read, &namespace_sem)
 		ret = do_listmount(ns, kreq.mnt_id, last_mnt_id, kmnt_ids,
 				   nr_mnt_ids, (flags & LISTMOUNT_REVERSE));