• Eric Paris's avatar
    IMA: use i_writecount rather than a private counter · b9593d30
    Eric Paris authored
    IMA tracks the number of struct files which are holding a given inode
    readonly and the number which are holding the inode write or r/w.  It
    needs this information so when a new reader or writer comes in it can
    tell if this new file will be able to invalidate results it already made
    about existing files.
    
    aka if a task is holding a struct file open RO, IMA measured the file
    and recorded those measurements and then a task opens the file RW IMA
    needs to note in the logs that the old measurement may not be correct.
    It's called a "Time of Measure Time of Use" (ToMToU) issue.  The same is
    true is a RO file is opened to an inode which has an open writer.  We
    cannot, with any validity, measure the file in question since it could
    be changing.
    
    This patch attempts to use the i_writecount field to track writers.  The
    i_writecount field actually embeds more information in it's value than
    IMA needs but it should work for our purposes and allow us to shrink the
    struct inode even more.
    Signed-off-by: default avatarEric Paris <eparis@redhat.com>
    Acked-by: default avatarMimi Zohar <zohar@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
    b9593d30
ima.h 4.83 KB