Re: [PATCH 1/2] file-posix: fix Linux alignment probing when EIO is returned

[Stefan Hajnoczi]

On Tue, Nov 01, 2022 at 07:49:20PM -0700, Eric Biggers wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 01, 2022 at 07:27:16PM -0700, Eric Biggers wrote:
> > On Tue, Nov 01, 2022 at 03:00:30PM -0400, Stefan Hajnoczi wrote:
> > > Linux dm-crypt returns errno EIO from unaligned O_DIRECT pread(2) calls.
> > 
> > Citation needed.  For direct I/O to block devices, the kernel's block layer
> > checks the alignment before the I/O is actually submitted to the underlying
> > block device.  See
> > https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/block/fops.c?h=v6.1-rc3#n306
> > 
> > > Buglink: https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu/-/issues/1290
> > 
> > That "bug" seems to be based on a misunderstanding of the kernel source 
> > code,
> > and not any actual testing.
> > 
> > I just tested it, and the error code is EINVAL.
> > 
> 
> I think I see what's happening.  The kernel code was broken just a few months
> ago, in v6.0 by the commit "block: relax direct io memory alignment"
> (https://git.kernel.org/linus/b1a000d3b8ec582d).  Now the block layer lets DIO
> through when the user buffer is only aligned to the device's dma_alignment.  
> But
> a dm-crypt device has a dma_alignment of 512 even when the crypto sector size
> (and thus also the logical block size) is 4096.  So there is now a case where
> misaligned DIO can reach dm-crypt, when that shouldn't be possible.
> 
> It also means that STATX_DIOALIGN will give the wrong value for
> stx_dio_mem_align in the above case, 512 instead of 4096.  This is because
> STATX_DIOALIGN for block devices relies on the dma_alignment.
> 
> I'll raise this on the linux-block and dm-devel mailing lists.  It would be 
> nice
> if people reported kernel bugs instead of silently working around them...

Thanks! You have completed the picture of what's going on here.

Stefan

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