Various filesystems such as pidfs and drm support opening file handles
without having to require a file descriptor to identify the filesystem.
The filesystem are global single instances and can be trivially
identified solely on the information encoded in the file handle.
This makes it possible to not have to keep or acquire a sentinal file
descriptor just to pass it to open_by_handle_at() to identify the
filesystem. That's especially useful when such sentinel file descriptor
cannot or should not be acquired.
For pidfs this means a file handle can function as full replacement for
storing a pid in a file. Instead a file handle can be stored and
reopened purely based on the file handle.
Such autonomous file handles can be opened with or without specifying a
sentinal file descriptor. Userspace can trivially test for support by
trying to open the file handle with an invalid file descriptor.
Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner <brauner@xxxxxxxxxx>
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Christian Brauner (9):
fhandle: raise FILEID_IS_DIR in handle_type
fhandle: hoist copy_from_user() above get_path_from_fd()
fhandle: rename to get_path_anchor()
pidfs: add pidfs_root_path() helper
fhandle: reflow get_path_anchor()
exportfs: add FILEID_PIDFS
fhandle: add EXPORT_OP_AUTONOMOUS_HANDLES marker
fhandle, pidfs: support open_by_handle_at() purely based on file handle
selftests/pidfd: decode pidfd file handles withou having to specify an fd
fs/fhandle.c | 79 +++++++++++++---------
fs/internal.h | 1 +
fs/pidfs.c | 16 ++++-
include/linux/exportfs.h | 15 +++-
tools/testing/selftests/pidfd/Makefile | 2 +-
.../selftests/pidfd/pidfd_file_handle_test.c | 54 +++++++++++++++
6 files changed, 133 insertions(+), 34 deletions(-)
---
base-commit: 1ff46043a6745d56b37acfc888d6e2b4f4d90663
change-id: 20250619-work-pidfs-fhandle-b63ff35c4924
