13c589d5b0ac6 ("sysfs: use seq_file when reading regular files")
converted regular sysfs files to use seq_file. The commit substituted
generic_file_llseek() with seq_lseek() for llseek implementation.
Before the change, all regular sysfs files were allowed to seek to any
position in [0, PAGE_SIZE] as the file size is always PAGE_SIZE and
generic_file_llseek() allows any seeking inside the range under file
size; however, seq_lseek()'s behavior is different. It traverses the
output by repeatedly invoking ->show() until it reaches the target
offset or traversal indicates EOF. As seq_files are fully dynamic and
may not end at all, it doesn't support seeking from the end
(SEEK_END).
Apparently, there are userland tools which uses SEEK_END to discover
the buffer size to use and the switch to seq_lseek() disturbs them as
SEEK_END fails with -EINVAL.
The only benefits of using seq_lseek() instead of
generic_file_llseek() are
* Early failure. If traversing to certain file position should fail,
seq_lseek() will report such failures on lseek(2) instead of the
following read/write operations.
* EOF detection. While SEEK_END is not supported, SEEK_SET/CUR +
large offset can be used to detect eof - eof at the time of the seek
anyway as the file size may change dynamically.
Both aren't necessary for sysfs or prospect kernfs users. Revert to
genefic_file_llseek() and preserve the original behavior.
Signed-off-by: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>
Reported-by: Heiko Carstens <heiko.carstens@de.ibm.com>
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20131031114358.GA5551@osiris
Tested-by: Heiko Carstens <heiko.carstens@de.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>