[Ocfs2-devel] [PATCH] ocfs2: Don't print error when listing too many xattrs.

[Tao Ma]

Joel Becker wrote:
> On Tue, May 05, 2009 at 09:40:31AM +0800, Tao Ma wrote:
>> Joel Becker wrote:
>>> On Mon, May 04, 2009 at 05:18:09AM +0800, Tao Ma wrote:
>>>> Currently, when listing xattrs, kernel define XATTR_LIST_MAX as 65536
>>>> in include/linux/limits.h, so it can't handle too many xattrs.
>>>>
>>>> But with ocfs2 xattr tree, we actually have no limit for the number.
>>>> And it will pollute the message with something like this when listing.
>>>> (27738,0):ocfs2_iterate_xattr_buckets:3158 ERROR: status = -34
>>>> (27738,0):ocfs2_xattr_tree_list_index_block:3264 ERROR: status = -34
>>>>
>>>> So don't print "ERROR" message as this is not an ocfs2 error.
>>> 	Hmm, but this will stop iteration of the xattrs right where we
>>> hit the large one.  I don't think that's correct.  At the very least, we
>>> should go on listing with the following xattrs.
>>> 	Now, the xattr with a too-long name - should we skip it, or
>>> should we list a truncated name?  That I'm not sure of.
>> I think we should stop at where we are, return errors and let the user  
>> space handle this.
>>
>> Just give you an example.
>> 1. for((i=0;i<20000;i++))do setfattr -n "user.name$i" -v "aaaaa"  
>> /mnt/ocfs2/a;done
>> This will create a very long name list.
>>
>> 2. getfattr /mnt/ocfs2/a
>> /mnt/ocfs2/a: Argument list too long
>> So you see it says clearly that the name list is too long.
>> and the same goes for listxattr(2).
>> If the size of the list buffer is too small to hold the result, errno is  
>> set to ERANGE.
>>
>> But if you go ahead and don't return errors. we will get a name list of  
>> about ~5000 xattrs and no error is returned. So the user may wonder why  
>> I set 20000 xattrs, but only get 5000 xattrs and look at this as a bug.
> 
> 	I think I mis-read.  I was thinking you'd error if the name of
> an xattr was too long, and thus I could never list the xattrs past that
> name.  Instead, this is apparently that the entire list grew past an
> arbitrary limit.  If the kernel is enforcing this limit, this is
> probably the correct way to go.
yeah, this is what I mean. Sorry for my poor English.

Regards,
Tao