Subject: Re: [vserver] problem accessing NetApp Filer snapshot
From: Herbert Poetzl <herbert@13thfloor.at>
Date: Fri, 7 Sep 2007 16:17:22 +0200

On Fri, Sep 07, 2007 at 08:20:21AM +0200, Daniel Hokka Zakrisson wrote:
> Herbert Poetzl wrote:
> >On Thu, Sep 06, 2007 at 06:11:27PM -0700, Dallas Kashuba wrote:
> >>We have several vserver guests NFS mounting volumes being served from  
> >>Network Appliance filers.  The NFS mounting works as expected, other  
> >>than access to the snapshots provided by the NetApp filesystem.
> >
> >NFS tasgging is disabled, I presume?
> >
> >>Under normal circumstances (non-vserver), you access the snapshot  
> >>from anywhere along the filesystem by simply doing 'cd .snapshot'.   
> >>Within there you will see a directory for each snapshot named  
> >>something like hourly.0, nightly.0, or weekly.1 (etc), which contain  
> >>copies of the files from those points in time.  They work like any  
> >>other directory aside from being read-only and being hidden from 'ls'  
> >>output.  Any user can access the snapshots for any part of the  
> >>filesystem that user ordinarily has access to.  No root access is  
> >>required.
> >>
> >>Inside the vserver guests it does not work as expected, though.   
> >>Attempting to 'cd .snapshot' never works at all unless BINARY_MOUNT  
> >>is added to ccapabilities.  This seems odd to me as there is no  
> >>mounting taking place from what I understand, but the kernel seems to  
> >>think there is. 
> >
> >there is a mount happening in this case,
> >because the filer provides the snapshot
> >as a different (subtree) export
> >(but it happens inside the kernel)
> >
> >>With BINARY_MOUNT added, the root user is then able to access
> >>.snapshot in all cases. non-root users cannot, though. A non-root user
> >>CAN access a .snapshot portion of the filesystem after the root user
> >>has accessed it once previously, though. Here's an example...
> >
> >and this works fine on the host system?
> >(I mean as non-root user on the host?)
> >
> >>vserver03:/etc/vservers/patrick# vserver patrick enter
> >>patrick:/# su - testuser
> >>[patrick]$ whoami
> >>testuser
> >>[patrick]$ cd .snapshot
> >>-su: cd: .snapshot: Operation not permitted
> >># (Note the "Operation not permitted" error)
> >>
> >>[patrick]$ logout
> >># (back to root now)
> >>
> >>patrick:/# cd /home/testuser/.snapshot
> >>patrick:/# su - testuser
> >>[patrick]$ cd .snapshot
> >># (after accessing it once as root, it's now accessible as the non- 
> >>root user)
> >>
> >>[patrick]$ ls
> >>hourly.0  hourly.1  nightly.0  nightly.1  weekly.0  weekly.1
> >>[patrick]$ ls hourly.0
> >>ls: hourly.0: Operation not permitted
> >># (access one more level down the filesystem is still not permitted)
> >>
> >>[patrick]$ logout
> >>patrick:/# cd /home/testuser/.snapshot/
> >>patrick:/home/testuser/.snapshot# ls -l
> >>total 32
> >>drwxr-x--x  7 testuser users 4096 Jul  3 10:53 hourly.0
> >>drwxr-x--x  7 testuser users 4096 Jul  3 10:53 hourly.1
> >>drwxr-x--x  7 testuser users 4096 Jul  3 10:53 nightly.0
> >>drwxr-x--x  7 testuser users 4096 Jul  3 10:53 nightly.1
> >>drwxr-x--x  7 testuser users 4096 Jul  3 10:53 weekly.0
> >>drwxr-x--x  7 testuser users 4096 Jul  3 10:53 weekly.1
> >>
> >># (doing an ls -la as root accesses every directory below)
> >>
> >>patrick:/home/testuser/.snapshot# su - testuser
> >>[patrick]$ cd .snapshot/hourly.0
> >>[patrick]$ ls
> >>Maildir  logs  testdomain.com  svn  svntest
> >>[patrick]$ cd ../weekly.1
> >>[patrick]$ ls
> >>Maildir  logs  testdomain.com  svn  svntest
> >>[patrick]$ logout
> >>
> >>After the root user ran 'ls -la' inside .snapshot, the non-root user  
> >>could then access all of the hourly.0, weekly.1 etc snapshot  
> >>directories below.
> >
> >this is most likely because the entries are
> >already in the dentry cache on the 'client'
> >
> >>Does anyone have any clues about how to fix this?  
> >
> >>Ideally BINARY_MOUNT would not be needed at all, but 
> >
> >well, let's postpone this question ...
> >
> >>it's ok as long as it works normally for non-root users.
> >>
> >>Any ideas are appreciated!
> >
> >yeah, please provide the following debug info:
> >
> > - complete rpc and nfs(d) debug output for all
> >   cases, i.e. root/user on host/guest
> > - Linux-VServer debug dmesg output
> >
> >we know that the subtree checks (depending on
> >the nfs version) cause some issues, and I think
> >we can fix them with sufficient data ...
> 
> Didn't we come to the conclusion that this problem was due to the
> extra vx_capable in vfs_kern_mount when this was discussed on IRC,
> which ought to be just vx_ccaps?

should be easy to test, in this case 2.3.0.19
should not have this issue at all, no?

but I would guess some problems with subtree
mounts ove NFS will still remain ...

anyway, maybe Dallas can test that too?

best,
Herbert

> >TIA,
> >Herbert
> >
> >>Thanks!
> >>Dallas
> 
> -- 
> Daniel Hokka Zakrisson