request for 4.4-stable: e7c0b5991dd1b ("ovl: warn instead of error if d_type is not supported")

Hi Greg,

This patch is not marked for 4.4-stable, but it's already in 4.9 and 4.14 stable.

Please apply to 4.4-stable.

This patch turned the status from error to warning if d_type is not supported, and thus operation won't be interrupted.

SZ Lin (林上智)

From: Vivek Goyal <[email protected]>
Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2016 10:02:44 -0400
Subject: [PATCH] ovl: warn instead of error if d_type is not supported

commit e7c0b5991dd1be7b6f6dc2b54a15a0f47b64b007 upstream

overlay needs underlying fs to support d_type. Recently I put in a patch in to detect this condition and started failing mount if underlying fs did not support d_type.

But this breaks existing configurations over kernel upgrade. Those who are running docker (partially broken configuration) with xfs not supporting d_type, are surprised that after kernel upgrade docker does not run anymore.

https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/22937#issuecomment-229881315

So instead of erroring out, detect broken configuration and warn about it. This should allow existing docker setups to continue working after kernel upgrade.

---
 fs/overlayfs/super.c | 12 +++++++-----
 1 file changed, 7 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)

index fd21c5f74fba..0035cb80ecd1 100644
@@ -1066,11 +1066,13 @@ static int ovl_fill_super(struct super_block *sb, void *data, int silent)
 			if (err < 0)
 				goto out_put_workdir;
 
-			if (!err) {
-				pr_err("overlayfs: upper fs needs to support d_type.\n");
-				err = -EINVAL;
-				goto out_put_workdir;
-			}
+			/*
+			 * We allowed this configuration and don't want to
+			 * break users over kernel upgrade. So warn instead
+			 * of erroring out.
+			 */
+			if (!err)
+				pr_warn("overlayfs: upper fs needs to support d_type.\n");
 		}
 	}
 

2.18.0