[patch for 2.6.26 2/4] vfs: utimensat(): be consistent with utime() for immutable and append-only files

This patch fixes utimensat() to make its behavior consistent
with that of utime()/utimes() when dealing with files marked
immutable and append-only.

The current utimensat() implementation also returns EPERM if
'times' is non-NULL and the tv_nsec fields are both UTIME_NOW.
For consistency, the

(times != NULL && times[0].tv_nsec == UTIME_NOW &&
                  times[1].tv_nsec == UTIME_NOW)

case should be treated like the traditional utimes() case where
'times' is NULL.  That is, the call should succeed for a file
marked append-only and should give the error EACCES if the file
is marked as immutable.

The simple way to do this is to set 'times' to NULL
if (times[0].tv_nsec == UTIME_NOW && times[1].tv_nsec == UTIME_NOW).

This is also the natural approach, since POSIX.1 semantics consider the
times == {{x, UTIME_NOW}, {y, UTIME_NOW}}
to be exactly equivalent to the case for
times == NULL.

(Thanks to Miklos for pointing this out.)

Patch 3 in this series relies on the simplification provided
by this patch.

Acked-by: Miklos Szeredi <miklos@szeredi.hu>
Cc: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
Cc: Ulrich Drepper <drepper@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Michael Kerrisk <mtk.manpages@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>

fs/utimes.c

@@ -102,6 +102,10 @@ long do_utimes(int dfd, char __user *filename, struct timespec *times, int flags
 	if (error)
 		goto dput_and_out;
 
+	if (times && times[0].tv_nsec == UTIME_NOW &&
+		     times[1].tv_nsec == UTIME_NOW)
+		times = NULL;
+
 	/* Don't worry, the checks are done in inode_change_ok() */
 	newattrs.ia_valid = ATTR_CTIME | ATTR_MTIME | ATTR_ATIME;
 	if (times) {