Re: [PATCH v2] common: strip attr 2.6.0 --restore safety warnings

Hello Darrick,

Thanks for the review.

On 7/13/26 6:14 PM, Darrick J. Wong wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 13, 2026 at 03:52:56PM +0200, Avinesh Kumar wrote:
>> From: Avinesh Kumar <[email protected]>
>>
>> attr 2.6.0 (CVE-2026-54371 hardening) makes "setfattr --restore" print a
>> warning to stderr when neither -P nor -h is given, claiming it may
>> traverse or dereference symlinks in the dump's pathnames [0]. This warning
>> leaks into test output and breaks generic/062 and xfs/083 (via
>> _scratch_populate).
>>
>> Add a _setfattr_restore helper that runs "setfattr --restore", filters
>> out just the expected warning line, and preserves any other (unexpected)
>> stderr. Convert the callers in common/populate, common/overlay and
>> generic/062 to use it.
>>
>> [0] https://cgit.git.savannah.nongnu.org/cgit/attr.git/commit/?id=3fb06b9ba314d37035d0877e6de313de754f1ac8
>>
>> Suggested-by: Darrick J. Wong <[email protected]>
>> Signed-off-by: Avinesh Kumar <[email protected]>
>> ---
>>   common/overlay    | 2 +-
>>   common/populate   | 4 ++--
>>   common/rc         | 8 ++++++++
>>   tests/generic/062 | 2 +-
>>   4 files changed, 12 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)
>>
>> diff --git a/common/overlay b/common/overlay
>> index d32f3219..73841dd7 100644
>> --- a/common/overlay
>> +++ b/common/overlay
>> @@ -494,7 +494,7 @@ _overlay_trusted_to_user()
>>   	local dir=$1
>>   
>>   	for file in `find $dir`; do
>> -		_getfattr --absolute-names -d -m '^trusted.overlay.(redirect|metacopy)$' $file  | sed 's/^trusted/user/' | $SETFATTR_PROG --restore=-
>> +		_getfattr --absolute-names -d -m '^trusted.overlay.(redirect|metacopy)$' $file  | sed 's/^trusted/user/' | _setfattr_restore --restore=-
>>   		for xattr in `_getfattr --absolute-names -d -m '^trusted.overlay.' $file  | tail -n +2 | cut -d= -f1`; do
>>   			$SETFATTR_PROG -x $xattr $file;
>>   		done
>> diff --git a/common/populate b/common/populate
>> index 1c0dd03e..f7fcd0c3 100644
>> --- a/common/populate
>> +++ b/common/populate
>> @@ -151,7 +151,7 @@ __populate_create_attr() {
>>   		echo "# file: ${name}";
>>   		seq --format "user.%08g=\"abcdefgh\"" 0 "${nr}"
>>   		echo
>> -	) | setfattr --restore -
>> +	) | _setfattr_restore --restore=-
>>   
>>   	test -z "${missing}" && return
>>   	seq 1 2 "${nr}" | while read d; do
>> @@ -200,7 +200,7 @@ __populate_xfs_create_btree_attr() {
>>   			seq --format "user.%08g=\"abcdefgh\"" "${nr}" "$((nr + incr + 1))"
>>   			echo "user.v$(printf "%.08d" "$nr")=\"${bigval}\""
>>   			echo
>> -		) | setfattr --restore -
>> +		) | _setfattr_restore --restore=-
>>   	done
>>   
>>   	# ... and in the second loop we delete all the remote attrs to
>> diff --git a/common/rc b/common/rc
>> index 79189e7e..6234a580 100644
>> --- a/common/rc
>> +++ b/common/rc
>> @@ -132,6 +132,14 @@ _test_fsxattr_xflag()
>>   	grep -q "fsxattr.xflags.*\[.*$2.*\]" <($XFS_IO_PROG -c "stat -v" "$1")
>>   }
>>   
>> +_setfattr_restore()
>> +{
>> +	$SETFATTR_PROG "$@" 2> $tmp.setfattr.$$
> 
> Hrm... I suppose if you're going to allow any arguments to setfattr (and
> not specifically require --restore=) then the helper ought to be called
> _setfattr.
> 
> Other than naming, the changes look ok to me.
I made wrapper to take argument (instead of hardcoding --restore=-) to 
handle the generic/062 case where it restores from a file and also have 
'-h'.
And I kept helper name '_setfattr_restore' as it is still entirely 
restore specific but I leave that up to you. Please let me know if I 
should send revised patch.

> 
> --D
> 
>> +	local ret=$?
>> +	cat $tmp.setfattr.$$ | sed -e '/--restore=.*unsafe.*without/d' 1>&2
>> +	return $ret
>> +}
>> +
>>   # This test requires extsize support on the  filesystem
>>   _require_scratch_extsize()
>>   {
>> diff --git a/tests/generic/062 b/tests/generic/062
>> index 89659040..3ef96da1 100755
>> --- a/tests/generic/062
>> +++ b/tests/generic/062
>> @@ -186,7 +186,7 @@ _create_test_bed
>>   _extend_test_bed
>>   
>>   echo "*** restore everything"
>> -setfattr -h --restore=$tmp.backup1
>> +_setfattr_restore -h --restore=$tmp.backup1 2>&1 | _filter_scratch
>>   _backup $tmp.backup2
>>   
>>   echo "AFTER RESTORE" >>$seqres.full
>> -- 
>> 2.54.0
>>


Regards,
Avinesh