Ivan Kruglov
6080d1cc42
The getxattr(2) man page only enumerates xattr-specific errors (ENODATA,
ENOTSUP, ERANGE, E2BIG, ...) in its own ERRORS section, but at the
bottom of that section notes that "the errors documented in stat(2) can
also be returned." stat(2) returns -ENOENT when a component of the path
does not exist, so any xattr lookup against a path can fail with -ENOENT
exactly the same way as -ENODATA — both mean "there is nothing here for
me to read." The previous definition of ERRNO_IS_NEG_XATTR_ABSENT()
reflected only the directly-enumerated errors and missed -ENOENT, so
callers that should semantically swallow "the xattr is absent" instead
bubbled -ENOENT up as a hard error.
The most visible consequence on real fleets has been systemd-journald
spamming dmesg with one line per dispatched log message whenever a
unit's cgroup directory cannot be found at the time
client_context_read_log_filter_patterns() is called — typically inside
containers whose journald observes clients whose unit cgroup is no
longer present in its view (cgroup-namespace boundary, unit teardown
race, transient sub-scope already collapsed back to its unit cgroup,
etc.). The same bug pattern lurks at every other cgroup-xattr callsite:
systemd-oomd reading user.oomd_avoid / user.oomd_omit / user.oomd_ooms
on cgroups it is concurrently killing; killall reading
user.survive_final_kill_signal during shutdown; cg_is_delegated() /
cg_has_coredump_receive() / cgroup_get_managed_oom_kill_last(); etc. For
these, "path is gone" is by construction the same answer as "xattr is
not set" — there is no way for the user to have attached an xattr to a
path that does not exist.
A quick survey of non-cgroup callers (src/portable/portable.c,
src/home/{homework-luks,user-record-util}.c,
src/random-seed/random-seed-tool.c, src/basic/os-util.c) confirms they
all operate on fds or on paths whose absence is already the desired
silent-skip outcome, so widening the macro to also fold in -ENOENT does
not change observable behavior at any other site.
Extend test-xattr-util's getxattr_at_malloc test with an explicit
non-existent-path lookup that asserts ERRNO_IS_NEG_XATTR_ABSENT() now
matches, alongside the pre-existing non-existent-xattr (-ENODATA) check.
System and Service Manager
Details
Most documentation is available on systemd's web site.
Assorted, older, general information about systemd can be found in the systemd Wiki.
Information about build requirements is provided in the README file.
Consult our NEWS file for information about what's new in the most recent systemd versions.
Please see the Code Map for information about this repository's layout and content.
Please see the Hacking guide for information on how to hack on systemd and test your modifications.
Please see our Contribution Guidelines for more information about filing GitHub Issues and posting GitHub Pull Requests.
When preparing patches for systemd, please follow our Coding Style Guidelines.
If you are looking for support, please contact our mailing list, join our IRC channel #systemd on libera.chat or Matrix channel
Stable branches with backported patches are available in the stable repo.
We have a security bug bounty program sponsored by the Sovereign Tech Fund hosted on YesWeHack
Repositories with distribution packages built from git main are available on OBS, and also repositories with packages built from the latest stable release