LOOP_GET_STATUS(64) truncates pathnames to 64 chars (was Re: Bug in mkfs.btrfs?!)

[Chris Samuel <chris@csamuel.org>]

/*
 * CC'd to linux-kernel in case they have any feedback on this.
 *
 * Long thread, trying to work out why mkfs.btrfs failed to
 * make a filesystem on an encrypted loopback mount called
 * /dev/loop2. Cause turned out to be mkfs.btrfs calling
 * LOOP_GET_STATUS to find out if the block device was mounted
 * and getting a truncated device name back and so it later
 * fails when lstat() is called on the truncated device path.
 *
 * The long device name for the encrypted loopback mount was
 * because /dev/disk/by-id/$ID was used when Felix created it
 * to cope with devices moving around.
 */

On 25/01/11 00:01, Felix Blanke wrote:

> you were talking about the LOOP_GET_STATUS function. I'm not
> quite sure where does it came from. Is it part of the kernel?
> Or does it come from the util-linux package?

It's in the kernel, and there is both LOOP_GET_STATUS (old
implementation) and LOOP_GET_STATUS64 (new implementation).

They return structures called loop_info and loop_info64
respectively and both are defined in include/linux/loop.h .

Sadly in both cases the lengths of paths are defined to be
LO_NAME_SIZE which is currently 64 and hence either
implementation will cause the problematic:

lstat("/dev/disk/by-id/ata-INTEL_SSDSA2M160G2GC_CVPO939201JX160AGN-par",
0x7fffa30b3cf0) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)

I've CC'd this to the LKML in case they have any feedback on
this apparent problem with the API.

cheers,
Chris
-- 
 Chris Samuel  :  http://www.csamuel.org/  :  Melbourne, VIC