[3.8.y.z extended stable] Patch "mnt: Change the default remount atime from relatime to the existing value" has been added to staging queue

[Kamal Mostafa]

This is a note to let you know that I have just added a patch titled

    mnt: Change the default remount atime from relatime to the existing value

to the linux-3.8.y-queue branch of the 3.8.y.z extended stable tree 
which can be found at:

 http://kernel.ubuntu.com/git?p=ubuntu/linux.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/linux-3.8.y-queue

This patch is scheduled to be released in version 3.8.13.28.

If you, or anyone else, feels it should not be added to this tree, please 
reply to this email.

For more information about the 3.8.y.z tree, see
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/Dev/ExtendedStable

Thanks.
-Kamal

------

>From df8958c1f56838a269c701539da3402ba0160634 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm at xmission.com>
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2014 17:36:04 -0700
Subject: mnt: Change the default remount atime from relatime to the existing
 value

commit ffbc6f0ead47fa5a1dc9642b0331cb75c20a640e upstream.

Since March 2009 the kernel has treated the state that if no
MS_..ATIME flags are passed then the kernel defaults to relatime.

Defaulting to relatime instead of the existing atime state during a
remount is silly, and causes problems in practice for people who don't
specify any MS_...ATIME flags and to get the default filesystem atime
setting.  Those users may encounter a permission error because the
default atime setting does not work.

A default that does not work and causes permission problems is
ridiculous, so preserve the existing value to have a default
atime setting that is always guaranteed to work.

Using the default atime setting in this way is particularly
interesting for applications built to run in restricted userspace
environments without /proc mounted, as the existing atime mount
options of a filesystem can not be read from /proc/mounts.

In practice this fixes user space that uses the default atime
setting on remount that are broken by the permission checks
keeping less privileged users from changing more privileged users
atime settings.

Acked-by: Serge E. Hallyn <serge.hallyn at ubuntu.com>
Signed-off-by: "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm at xmission.com>
Signed-off-by: Kamal Mostafa <kamal at canonical.com>
---
 fs/namespace.c | 8 ++++++++
 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+)

diff --git a/fs/namespace.c b/fs/namespace.c
index 1d8b3d8..4d63cfe 100644
--- a/fs/namespace.c
+++ b/fs/namespace.c
@@ -2327,6 +2327,14 @@ long do_mount(const char *dev_name, const char *dir_name,
 	if (flags & MS_RDONLY)
 		mnt_flags |= MNT_READONLY;

+	/* The default atime for remount is preservation */
+	if ((flags & MS_REMOUNT) &&
+	    ((flags & (MS_NOATIME | MS_NODIRATIME | MS_RELATIME |
+		       MS_STRICTATIME)) == 0)) {
+		mnt_flags &= ~MNT_ATIME_MASK;
+		mnt_flags |= path.mnt->mnt_flags & MNT_ATIME_MASK;
+	}
+
 	flags &= ~(MS_NOSUID | MS_NOEXEC | MS_NODEV | MS_ACTIVE | MS_BORN |
 		   MS_NOATIME | MS_NODIRATIME | MS_RELATIME| MS_KERNMOUNT |
 		   MS_STRICTATIME);
--
1.9.1