From 13c6ad0f45fd0382e77829a6c738f3e18739c15b Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Kevin Locke Date: Sat, 22 Aug 2020 20:22:57 -0600 Subject: [PATCH] ovl: document lower modification caveats Some overlayfs optional features are incompatible with offline changes to the lower tree and may result in -EXDEV, -EIO, or other errors. Such modification is not supported and the error behavior is intentionally not specified. Update the "Changes to underlying filesystems" section to note this restriction. Move the paragraph describing the offline behavior below the online behavior so it is adjacent to the following 3 paragraphs describing the NFS export offline modification behavior. Link: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-unionfs/20200708142353.GA103536@redhat.com/ Link: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-unionfs/CAOQ4uxi23Zsmfb4rCed1n=On0NNA5KZD74jjjeyz+et32sk-gg@mail.gmail.com/ Link: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-unionfs/20200817135651.GA637139@redhat.com/ Link: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-unionfs/20200709153616.GE150543@redhat.com/ Link: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-unionfs/20200812135529.GA122370@kevinolos/ Signed-off-by: Kevin Locke Signed-off-by: Miklos Szeredi --- Documentation/filesystems/overlayfs.rst | 10 +++++++--- 1 file changed, 7 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/overlayfs.rst b/Documentation/filesystems/overlayfs.rst index 1ef4ef38b542..b86be7c6a952 100644 --- a/Documentation/filesystems/overlayfs.rst +++ b/Documentation/filesystems/overlayfs.rst @@ -469,14 +469,18 @@ summarized in the `Inode properties`_ table above. Changes to underlying filesystems --------------------------------- -Offline changes, when the overlay is not mounted, are allowed to either -the upper or the lower trees. - Changes to the underlying filesystems while part of a mounted overlay filesystem are not allowed. If the underlying filesystem is changed, the behavior of the overlay is undefined, though it will not result in a crash or deadlock. +Offline changes, when the overlay is not mounted, are allowed to the +upper tree. Offline changes to the lower tree are only allowed if the +"metadata only copy up", "inode index", and "redirect_dir" features +have not been used. If the lower tree is modified and any of these +features has been used, the behavior of the overlay is undefined, +though it will not result in a crash or deadlock. + When the overlay NFS export feature is enabled, overlay filesystems behavior on offline changes of the underlying lower layer is different than the behavior when NFS export is disabled. -- 2.20.1