-
As one might expect the FsRtlCreateSectionForDataScan function begins with various parameter checks, primarily to filter out various invalid parameters. There is also a check to see if the FileObject supports sections.
The next step is to set the TopLevelIrp to the value 1, which maps to FSRTL_FSP_TOP_LEVEL_IRP.
Once that is done there is a call to nt!FsRtlAcquireFileExclusiveCommon. This function is not documented anywhere and I could only find some references in crash dumps. However, looking for just FsRtlAcquireFileExclusive returns more hits and we can see that FsRtlAcquireFileExclusive doesn't do much beyond calling nt!FsRtlAcquireFileExclusiveCommon. In the ntifs.h file we see a comment to the effect that FsRtlAcquireFileExclusive is called from NtCreateSection to avoid deadlocks with file systems, so we can guess that this the same thing going on here. We can also guess that whatever FsRtlCreateSectionForDataScan does is probably pretty similar to NtCreateSection.
The next step is to get the file size. This is done by a call to nt!FsRtlGetFileSize, and the documentation for FsRtlGetFileSize states that "If you already own file system resources, you should call FsRtlGetFileSize instead of ZwQueryInformationFile, because attempting to acquire the file object lock would violate locking order and lead to deadlocks. The ZwQueryInformationFile function should be only if you do not already own file system resources.". This makes sense since the function has already acquired the file object lock in the previous step.
There is a quick check to see if the file is empty and the function should return with STATUS_END_OF_FILE.
Then, once everything is set up we have a call to nt!MmCreateSection. Calling this function directly is not supported by Microsoft and there is no documentation for how to do that. This is basically why FsRtlCreateSectionForDataScan was added. This can be inferred from the msdn page "Installing the Filter Manager rollup package for Windows XP SP2". If the function returns STATUS_FILE_LOCK_CONFLICT the call to nt!MmCreateSection is retried after delaying the thread by nt!FsRtlHalfSecond (I had no idea this existed, but I plan to use it from now on :)).
Once the section is created there is a call to nt!CcZeroEndOfLastPage. I've not been able to find any documentation for this function (though it's pretty obvious what it does) except in the NT Insider article "Cache Me if You Can: Using the NT Cache Manager".
Once this is done the function releases the locks so the rest of the function is done outside the critical region (that was set up around step 2).
The only interesting thing happening in the rest of the function is the creation of the handle for the section in the current process handle table. The rest of it just deals with cleanup and the return path from the function.
Thursday, November 15, 2012
FltCreateSectionForDataScan
Thanks everyone for your suggestions. I really appreciate you took the time and sent me emails. Some of the topics you've suggested I won't be able to address for various reasons (mostly having to do with the legal implications of my doing that). However, I have a couple of topics that I might go over in the next couple of months. Incidentally, I also plan to change the frequency of my posts because of changes around my work so I'll probably update the blog whenever I get around to it. I still plan to answer questions though so feel free to leave comments and suggest topics (preferably in email). And now let's proceed to the topic at hand.
Someone suggested it would be useful to take a closer look at what FltCreateSectionForDataScan does and discuss how the same functionality could be achieved in previous OS releases. The FltCreateSectionForDataScan function is documented as being supported only in Win8+ but looking at the documentation page for the FltRegisterForDataScan function there is a mention about the FsRtlCreateSectionForDataScan function, which is documented as being available since Win 2000 SP4 and XPSP2, basically from the time FltMgr is available. A quick look in the debugger at FltCreateSectionForDataScan shows that it's really a wrapper around FsRtlCreateSectionForDataScan so I thought it might be useful to take a closer look at that:
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Suggestions
Hi everyone. It seems lately I'm having a hard time coming up with good topics, so I wanted to ask you to send me emails with topics you might be interested in. These could be things you already know but you think might be beneficial to have posted somewhere to the rest of the community or things you're not sure about. However, please keep the requests specific. Things like "minifilter interaction with the memory manager" are simply too vague to be helful. You could ask about specific functions or behaviors or structure members (but again, please keep it specific). You can find my email address on my contact information on this blog.
Thanks,Alex.
Thursday, September 27, 2012
A Helpful Debugging Technique: Debug Stream Contexts
In this post I'd like to discuss a debugging technique that I found pretty useful. I'm a big fan of keeping lots of information around in debug builds and ASSERTing all over the place. I try to be very careful about what information I keep so that I don't change the actual flow of execution for the code. For example, I tend to try to not add references when I copy some pointers because I don't want to alter when freeing the memory happens for the objects I'm tracking (but this approach requires extra care when asserting since I don't want to use pointers to free memory).
One particularly useful thing I like is to keep track of all the files I've processed in my filter and remember various decisions I made about them and keep back-pointers to things that would otherwise be impossible to find (for example when I base my decision on some parameters in the FLT_CALLBACK_DATA I might take a snapshot of those parameters; or I might keep a stack trace for certain operations and so on). The problem that arises with this approach is, of course, where to store this information. In some cases it's feasible to use some of the structures I'm already using (StreamContext or StreamHandleContext) and just add extra members in debug builds. However, there are other times where this becomes a significant pain and it would alter the filter quite a bit (for example, if the logic of the filter is to check for presence of a context to decide on what to do with a file then adding a context in which I only populate the debugging information for files I don't intend to process would change that logic). Also, certain contexts might store data that isn't fixed in size (like a file name or path) which I typically set to be the last thing in the context so adding more debugging information (which might itself be dynamic in size) would make things very complicated.
The ideal approach would be to set more than one context on an object, but FltMgr's functions don’t really allow that. Well, here is where the some FsRtl functions really come in handy. There is support built in the file system library (FsRtl code) for contexts (which I've discussed in more detail in my post on Contexts in legacy filters and FSRTL_ADVANCED_FCB_HEADER) and the library supports setting multiple contexts for the same stream, with different keys. Moreover, the contexts have two keys and there are pretty cool searching semantics that allow searching on only one key. The functions that deal with this are FsRtlInitPerStreamContext, FsRtlInsertPerStreamContext and FsRtlLookupPerStreamContext. They’re pretty easy to use and there is even a page on MSDN on Creating and Using Per-Stream Context Structures.
Here is some code that shows how to use these functions:
One particularly useful thing I like is to keep track of all the files I've processed in my filter and remember various decisions I made about them and keep back-pointers to things that would otherwise be impossible to find (for example when I base my decision on some parameters in the FLT_CALLBACK_DATA I might take a snapshot of those parameters; or I might keep a stack trace for certain operations and so on). The problem that arises with this approach is, of course, where to store this information. In some cases it's feasible to use some of the structures I'm already using (StreamContext or StreamHandleContext) and just add extra members in debug builds. However, there are other times where this becomes a significant pain and it would alter the filter quite a bit (for example, if the logic of the filter is to check for presence of a context to decide on what to do with a file then adding a context in which I only populate the debugging information for files I don't intend to process would change that logic). Also, certain contexts might store data that isn't fixed in size (like a file name or path) which I typically set to be the last thing in the context so adding more debugging information (which might itself be dynamic in size) would make things very complicated.
The ideal approach would be to set more than one context on an object, but FltMgr's functions don’t really allow that. Well, here is where the some FsRtl functions really come in handy. There is support built in the file system library (FsRtl code) for contexts (which I've discussed in more detail in my post on Contexts in legacy filters and FSRTL_ADVANCED_FCB_HEADER) and the library supports setting multiple contexts for the same stream, with different keys. Moreover, the contexts have two keys and there are pretty cool searching semantics that allow searching on only one key. The functions that deal with this are FsRtlInitPerStreamContext, FsRtlInsertPerStreamContext and FsRtlLookupPerStreamContext. They’re pretty easy to use and there is even a page on MSDN on Creating and Using Per-Stream Context Structures.
Here is some code that shows how to use these functions:
typedef struct _MY_DEBUG_CONTEXT {
//
// this is the header for the perStream context structure.
//
FSRTL_PER_STREAM_CONTEXT PerStreamContext;
//
// this is the information we want to track.
//
BOOLEAN Flag;
} MY_DEBUG_CONTEXT, *PMY_DEBUG_CONTEXT;
VOID
FreeDebugContext(
__in PVOID ContextToFree
)
{
//
// here we would release and uninitialize any other data..
//
//
// and then we free the actual context.
//
ExFreePoolWithTag( ContextToFree, 'CgbD' );
}
NTSTATUS
SetDebugContext(
__in PFILE_OBJECT FileObject,
__in PVOID Key1,
__in_opt PVOID Key2,
__in BOOLEAN Flag
)
{
PMY_DEBUG_CONTEXT context = NULL;
NTSTATUS status = STATUS_SUCCESS;
__try {
//
// allocate and initialize the context.
//
context = ExAllocatePoolWithTag( PagedPool,
sizeof(MY_DEBUG_CONTEXT),
'CgbD' );
if (context == NULL) {
status = STATUS_INSUFFICIENT_RESOURCES;
__leave;
}
FsRtlInitPerStreamContext( &context->PerStreamContext,
Key1,
Key2,
FreeDebugContext );
//
// initialize all the members that we want to track.
//
context->Flag = Flag;
//
// try to set the context.
//
status = FsRtlInsertPerStreamContext( FsRtlGetPerStreamContextPointer(FileObject),
&context->PerStreamContext );
NT_ASSERT(status == STATUS_SUCCESS);
} __finally {
if (!NT_SUCCESS(status)) {
if (context != NULL) {
ExFreePoolWithTag( context, 'CgbD' );
}
}
}
return status;
}
BOOLEAN
GetDebugContextFlag(
__in PFILE_OBJECT FileObject,
__in PVOID Key1,
__in_opt PVOID Key2
)
{
PMY_DEBUG_CONTEXT context = NULL;
context = (PMY_DEBUG_CONTEXT)FsRtlLookupPerStreamContext( FsRtlGetPerStreamContextPointer(FileObject),
Key1,
Key2 );
if ((context != NULL) &&
(context->Flag)) {
return TRUE;
}
return FALSE;
}
Finally, one more thing to show is how easy it is to find this structure in the debugger:
0: kd> dt @@(tempFileObject) nt!_FILE_OBJECT FsContext <- get the FsContext
+0x00c FsContext : 0xa24d05f8 Void
0: kd> dt 0xa24d05f8 nt!_FSRTL_ADVANCED_FCB_HEADER FilterContexts. <- look at the FilterContexts in the FsContext
+0x02c FilterContexts : [ 0xa25a1108 - 0x936e93e4 ]
+0x000 Flink : 0xa25a1108 _LIST_ENTRY [ 0x936e93e4 - 0xa24d0624 ]
+0x004 Blink : 0x936e93e4 _LIST_ENTRY [ 0xa24d0624 - 0xa25a1108 ]
0: kd> dl 0xa25a1108 <- look at all the entries in the list
a25a1108 936e93e4 a24d0624 9441eb40 92e3cb40
936e93e4 a24d0624 a25a1108 93437438 a24d05f8
a24d0624 a25a1108 936e93e4 00000000 a24d05f4
0: kd> !pool a25a1108 2 <- check the pool type for the first one
Pool page a25a1108 region is Paged pool
*a25a1100 size: 20 previous size: 100 (Allocated) *DbgC <- this is our structure
Owning component : Unknown (update pooltag.txt)
0: kd> !pool 936e93e4 2 <- for fun, let's see what the other context is
Pool page 936e93e4 region is Nonpaged pool
*936e93d8 size: 68 previous size: 8 (Allocated) *FMsl
Pooltag FMsl : STREAM_LIST_CTRL structure, Binary : fltmgr.sys <- obviously FltMgr's context
0: kd> dt a25a1108 _MY_DEBUG_CONTEXT <- display the debugging context
PassThrough!_MY_DEBUG_CONTEXT
+0x000 PerStreamContext : _FSRTL_PER_STREAM_CONTEXT
+0x014 Flag : 0x1 ''
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Volume Mount Points, Directory Junctions and STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION
Hi everyone. I've just spent a couple of days debugging an issue that I think is pretty interesting and I hope publishing this post might save someone a lot of pain.
Before I go into the specifics, let me explain a bit about my setup. My filter opens files for its own use but on behalf of the user (in other words it opens files in response to certain user actions, but the user must have access to the files as well (which is different from certain kinds of filters where the filter uses files but there is no connection between the user and the files; in those cases the files are similar to file system metadata)). It does this by calling FltCreateFile and it uses OBJ_FORCE_ACCESS_CHECK to make sure that all the access checks are performed. The files that the filter opens depend on the file that the user opens and so it's possible that the filter ends up opening symlinks or volume mount points and such. In these cases the file system will return a STATUS_REPARSE and the create will be retried on a different path; the same can happen if a file system filter returns STATUS_REPARSE. If the new path happens to be located on a different volume (which is usually the case with volume mount points, though not always since one can in fact create a mountpoint for C:\ at C:\mnt for example…) then the FltCreateFile call will generally fail with STATUS_MOUNT_POINT_NOT_RESOLVED. I've discussed this at great length in my post on Reparsing to a Different Volume in Win7 and Win8.
The problem I was running into was that when my filter tried to open a path containing a volume mount point it would fail with STATUS_ACCESS_DENIED. This behavior was different from symlinks where the call to FltCreateFile still failed with STATUS_MOUNT_POINT_NOT_RESOLVED. This was something I wanted to investigate since the STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION status is one I've learned to pay attention to because it generaly indicates a bug in my code. I thought that maybe I was calling FltCreateFile with some parameter that wasn't set up correctly which led to NTFS or the IO manager or the Object manager to try an invalid access, which was probably trapped in some exception handler and returned to the caller. This was definitely worth fixing since such problems can be exploited.
So I started the looong process of debugging this issue. Being an access violation I figured it comes from some improper memory access, which is different from calling some function that returns an error, because most instructions perform memory accesses so my usual approach of stepping to the next call and walking over it to see the return status would not work. Moreover, I had no guarantee that if I set a breakpoint later on I will actually hit it since any of the memory accesses up to that breakpoint could in fact be the culprit. And, to make things worse, this was in the create path for the file system, which is heavily exercised on a running system, which means that any breakpoint that I set in the debugger that's not threaded will often trigger when another thread happens to try to do a create. Anyway, to spare you the gory details, I eventually found the problem and this is what the stack looked like when the instruction I was about to execute was the one that triggered the access violation:
One additional thing I'd like to explain is why this check happens only for volume mount points and not symlinks. Volume mount points are different from symlinks in that there before a new IRP_MJ_CREATE is sent to the new path, for volume mount points the IO manager checks whether the user has access to the target volume. The same thing happens for directory junctions, which are similar in implementation to volume mount points. Symlinks don't perform this check and instead the new IRP_MJ_CREATE is simply issued to the new path and access checks will be performed there. Now, for volume mount points this access check takes the form of a IopQueryNetworkAttributes, which in turn is implemented as a special kind of OPEN operation (hence the call to ObOpenObjectByName). It's this second open where ObpCaptureObjectCreateInformation fails and the access violation happens.
This problem was fixed in Win8 and it was very likely a windows bug.
Before I end this post I'd like to summarize some of the things I've discussed:
Before I go into the specifics, let me explain a bit about my setup. My filter opens files for its own use but on behalf of the user (in other words it opens files in response to certain user actions, but the user must have access to the files as well (which is different from certain kinds of filters where the filter uses files but there is no connection between the user and the files; in those cases the files are similar to file system metadata)). It does this by calling FltCreateFile and it uses OBJ_FORCE_ACCESS_CHECK to make sure that all the access checks are performed. The files that the filter opens depend on the file that the user opens and so it's possible that the filter ends up opening symlinks or volume mount points and such. In these cases the file system will return a STATUS_REPARSE and the create will be retried on a different path; the same can happen if a file system filter returns STATUS_REPARSE. If the new path happens to be located on a different volume (which is usually the case with volume mount points, though not always since one can in fact create a mountpoint for C:\ at C:\mnt for example…) then the FltCreateFile call will generally fail with STATUS_MOUNT_POINT_NOT_RESOLVED. I've discussed this at great length in my post on Reparsing to a Different Volume in Win7 and Win8.
The problem I was running into was that when my filter tried to open a path containing a volume mount point it would fail with STATUS_ACCESS_DENIED. This behavior was different from symlinks where the call to FltCreateFile still failed with STATUS_MOUNT_POINT_NOT_RESOLVED. This was something I wanted to investigate since the STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION status is one I've learned to pay attention to because it generaly indicates a bug in my code. I thought that maybe I was calling FltCreateFile with some parameter that wasn't set up correctly which led to NTFS or the IO manager or the Object manager to try an invalid access, which was probably trapped in some exception handler and returned to the caller. This was definitely worth fixing since such problems can be exploited.
So I started the looong process of debugging this issue. Being an access violation I figured it comes from some improper memory access, which is different from calling some function that returns an error, because most instructions perform memory accesses so my usual approach of stepping to the next call and walking over it to see the return status would not work. Moreover, I had no guarantee that if I set a breakpoint later on I will actually hit it since any of the memory accesses up to that breakpoint could in fact be the culprit. And, to make things worse, this was in the create path for the file system, which is heavily exercised on a running system, which means that any breakpoint that I set in the debugger that's not threaded will often trigger when another thread happens to try to do a create. Anyway, to spare you the gory details, I eventually found the problem and this is what the stack looked like when the instruction I was about to execute was the one that triggered the access violation:
So as you can see we 're trying to read one byte from ECX, which is set to 0x7fff0000. Since we're in kernel mode this will fail with access violation. Let's look a bit up the stack to see where that weird ECX value came from (and I added a couple instructions on the bottom just to get the full picture):0: kd> kbn L0xa # ChildEBP RetAddr Args to Child 00 b0583190 82a8f20f 92637001 92637001 b0583734 nt!ObpCaptureObjectCreateInformation+0x61 01 b05831dc 82ae2587 b0583734 924d6f78 92637001 nt!ObOpenObjectByName+0x9b 02 b0583338 82ae17f6 b0583734 00120089 92637001 nt!IopFastQueryNetworkAttributes+0x127 03 b05833a4 82a88936 92637001 dc6a18a4 b0583550 nt!IopQueryNetworkAttributes+0x40 04 b0583480 82a6926b 938e34d8 974d6f78 92637008 nt!IopParseDevice+0x115e 05 b05834fc 82a8f2d9 00000000 b0583550 00000640 nt!ObpLookupObjectName+0x4fa 06 b0583558 82a8762b b0583734 924d6f78 00010000 nt!ObOpenObjectByName+0x165 07 b05835d4 82abee29 b058371c 00120089 b0583734 nt!IopCreateFile+0x673 08 b0583630 96297b62 b058371c 00120089 b0583734 nt!IoCreateFileEx+0x9e 09 b05836bc 9631f8f1 92ed7008 938fd008 b058371c fltmgr!FltCreateFileEx2+0xba 0: kd> u nt!ObpCaptureObjectCreateInformation+0x61: 82a78339 8a01 mov al,byte ptr [ecx] 82a7833b 833b18 cmp dword ptr [ebx],18h 0: kd> r eax=7fff0000 ebx=b0583734 ecx=7fff0000 edx=00000000 esi=00000000 edi=9260dd94 eip=82a78339 esp=b0583154 ebp=b0583190 iopl=0 ov up ei pl nz na po nc cs=0008 ss=0010 ds=0023 es=0023 fs=0030 gs=0000 efl=00000a02 nt!ObpCaptureObjectCreateInformation+0x61: 82a78339 8a01 mov al,byte ptr [ecx] ds:0023:7fff0000=??
Before I explain what's going on let's see what the IF is actually checking:0: kd> ub . L0xE nt!ObpCaptureObjectCreateInformation+0x35: 82a7830c 807d0800 cmp byte ptr [ebp+8],0 <- compare a parameter to the function with 0. 82a78310 7429 je nt!ObpCaptureObjectCreateInformation+0x63 (82a7833b) <- and jump if it's 0 82a78312 64a124010000 mov eax,dword ptr fs:[00000124h] <- look at some address 82a78318 80b83a01000000 cmp byte ptr [eax+13Ah],0 <- and see if another byte is 0 82a7831f 741a je nt!ObpCaptureObjectCreateInformation+0x63 (82a7833b) <- and if that is 0 jump to the same place as above (so we're probably exiting an IF statement) 82a78321 8bcb mov ecx,ebx 82a78323 f6c303 test bl,3 <- check if any of the least significant two bits in ebx are set 82a78326 7406 je nt!ObpCaptureObjectCreateInformation+0x56 (82a7832e) 82a78328 e8281f0d00 call nt!ExRaiseDatatypeMisalignment (82b4a255) <- and if they're set then raise an exception for data misalignment 82a7832d cc int 3 <- and look, there's a breakpoint 82a7832e a11c079b82 mov eax,dword ptr [nt!MmUserProbeAddress (829b071c)] <- load MmUserProbeAddress into EAX 82a78333 3bd8 cmp ebx,eax <- and compare it with EBX 82a78335 7202 jb nt!ObpCaptureObjectCreateInformation+0x61 (82a78339) <- and exit the IF statement if EBX is smaller than MmUserProbeAddress 82a78337 8bc8 mov ecx,eax <-move MmUserProbeAddress into ECX 82a78339 8a01 mov al,byte ptr [ecx] <- and try to read a byte from it. 82a7833b 833b18 cmp dword ptr [ebx],18h 0: kd> dp nt!MmUserProbeAddress L1 829b071c 7fff0000
Let's piece it all together. This piece of code is trying to figure out if a buffer that it receives as a parameter (I didn't show that code but that's what's in EBX) is accessible. It first looks at some boolean parameter and if that's TRUE then it looks at the PreviousMode and if that's UserMode then it checks the buffer for alignment (and it raises an exception if it's not aligned) and then it checks it's in user mode memory range ( smaller than MmUserProbeAddress ). If it's not smaller than MmUserProbeAddress then it just does a probe at MmUserProbeAddress. The buffer in question is the _OBJECT_ATTRIBUTES structure, which is actually the same one as the one I pass in for the original create. This is interesting because ObOpenObjectByName can be seen twice on the stack, with the same _OBJECT_ATTRIBUTES parameter, but the first time the call to nt!ObpCaptureObjectCreateInformation works when checking the buffer and the second time it doesn't. Since the PreviousMode is UserMode in both cases, the only difference is that the boolean parameter that ObpCaptureObjectCreateInformation is called with is 1 in the first case and 0 in the second case. This parameter seems to be related to OBJ_FORCE_ACCESS_CHECK since if I don't use OBJ_FORCE_ACCESS_CHECK then the parameter is 1 in both cases and no access violation happens.0: kd> dp fs:[00000124h] L1 0030:00000124 926bfd48 0: kd> !pool 926bfd48 2 Pool page 926bfd48 region is Nonpaged pool *926bfd18 size: 2e8 previous size: 10 (Allocated) *Thre (Protected) <- this is a thread! Pooltag Thre : Thread objects, Binary : nt!ps 0: kd> dt nt!_KTHREAD +0x000 Header : _DISPATCHER_HEADER +0x010 CycleTime : Uint8B ... +0x13a PreviousMode : Char <-and at offset 0x13A we have the PreviousMode ! ...
One additional thing I'd like to explain is why this check happens only for volume mount points and not symlinks. Volume mount points are different from symlinks in that there before a new IRP_MJ_CREATE is sent to the new path, for volume mount points the IO manager checks whether the user has access to the target volume. The same thing happens for directory junctions, which are similar in implementation to volume mount points. Symlinks don't perform this check and instead the new IRP_MJ_CREATE is simply issued to the new path and access checks will be performed there. Now, for volume mount points this access check takes the form of a IopQueryNetworkAttributes, which in turn is implemented as a special kind of OPEN operation (hence the call to ObOpenObjectByName). It's this second open where ObpCaptureObjectCreateInformation fails and the access violation happens.
This problem was fixed in Win8 and it was very likely a windows bug.
Before I end this post I'd like to summarize some of the things I've discussed:
- There is a windows 7 bug where if FltCreateFile tries to open a path that traverses a volume mount point or directory junction the call will fail with STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION. Fixed in Win8.
- This happens because of the extra access checking for volume mount points and directory junctions.
- This doesn't happen for symlinks.
- Workaround: I can't think of anything a filter could do but one posibility to address this problem is to ask customers to not use volume mount points and instead use directory symlinks.
NTSTATUS status; UNREFERENCED_PARAMETER( FltObjects ); UNREFERENCED_PARAMETER( CompletionContext ); PT_DBG_PRINT( PTDBG_TRACE_ROUTINES, ("PassThrough!PtPreOperationPassThrough: Entered\n") );if (Data->Iopb->MajorFunction == IRP_MJ_CREATE) { UNICODE_STRING myFile = RTL_CONSTANT_STRING( L"mnt" ); OBJECT_ATTRIBUTES fileAttributes; HANDLE fileHandle = NULL; IO_STATUS_BLOCK ioStatus; PFLT_FILE_NAME_INFORMATION fileName = NULL; NTSTATUS ecpFindStatus; ULONG targetEcpSize = 0; __try { // // this is a preCreate, get the name. // status = FltGetFileNameInformation( Data, FLT_FILE_NAME_OPENED | FLT_FILE_NAME_QUERY_DEFAULT, &fileName ); if (!NT_SUCCESS(status)) { DbgBreakPoint(); __leave; } // // we need to parse the name to get the final component // status = FltParseFileNameInformation( fileName ); if (!NT_SUCCESS(status)) { DbgBreakPoint(); __leave; } // // Compare to see if this is a file we care about. // if (!RtlEqualUnicodeString( &fileName->FinalComponent, &myFile, TRUE )) { __leave; } // // intialize the attributes and issue the create. // InitializeObjectAttributes( &fileAttributes, &fileName->Name, OBJ_KERNEL_HANDLE | OBJ_FORCE_ACCESS_CHECK, NULL, NULL ); status = FltCreateFileEx2( FltObjects->Filter, FltObjects->Instance, &fileHandle, NULL, FILE_READ_DATA | SYNCHRONIZE | FILE_READ_ATTRIBUTES, &fileAttributes, &ioStatus, NULL, FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL, FILE_SHARE_READ | FILE_SHARE_WRITE | FILE_SHARE_DELETE, FILE_OPEN, FILE_SYNCHRONOUS_IO_ALERT, NULL, 0, 0, NULL ); DbgBreakPoint(); } __finally { if (fileName != NULL) { FltReleaseFileNameInformation( fileName ); } if (fileHandle != NULL) { ZwClose(fileHandle); } } }// // See if this is an operation we would like the operation status // for. If so request it. // // NOTE: most filters do NOT need to do this. You only need to make // this call if, for example, you need to know if the oplock was // actually granted. // if (PtDoRequestOperationStatus( Data )) { status = FltRequestOperationStatusCallback( Data, PtOperationStatusCallback, (PVOID)(++OperationStatusCtx) ); if (!NT_SUCCESS(status)) { PT_DBG_PRINT( PTDBG_TRACE_OPERATION_STATUS, ("PassThrough!PtPreOperationPassThrough: FltRequestOperationStatusCallback Failed, status=%08x\n", status) ); } }
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Interesting article
I'm pretty swamped at work so I won't post anything this week, but I'd like to share an article that I found interesting. It's about some malware, Backdoor.Proxybox, that hooks NTFS directly. This is the page on Symantec's blog: Backdoor.Proxybox: Kernel File System Hooking.
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Completing Information Queries in File System Filters
Completing IRP_MJ_QUERY_INFORMATION requests isn't a terribly difficult task but I wanted to discuss some of the basics as well as share some code to show how a minifilter might go about doing this. I've already discussed some of the more advanced topics related to this in my previous posts on Filters And IRP_MJ_QUERY_INFORMATION and on Setting IoStatus.Information.
There are many information classes and many of them can be found on the documentation page for the ZwQueryInformationFile function, though the complete list is documented on the 2.4 File Information Classes page in the MS_FSCC document. Please note that not all of them can be used with IRP_MJ_QUERY_INFORMATION. However, for this post I'll only be focusing on those that can.
Pretty much each information class has an associated structure. For example, the information class of FileAlignmentInformation has the associated FILE_ALIGNMENT_INFORMATION structure. Some of these structures have a fixed size so in that case all a filter has to do is to populate the information and complete the request:
switch ( Data->Iopb->Parameters.QueryFileInformation.FileInformationClass ) {
case FilePositionInformation:
{
PFILE_POSITION_INFORMATION positionInfo = Data->Iopb->Parameters.QueryFileInformation.InfoBuffer;
// retrieve the current position from the file object
positionInfo->CurrentByteOffset = FltObjects->FileObject->CurrentByteOffset;
// then complete the operation
Data->IoStatus.Status = STATUS_SUCCESS;
Data->IoStatus.Information = sizeof(positionInfo->CurrentByteOffset);
callbackStatus = FLT_PREOP_COMPLETE;
}
break;
....
}
...
return callbackStatus;
Now, there are certain information classes that have variable length. In general this happens with classes that contain names (for example, FileNameInformation) or that return certain lists (like FileStreamInformation that returns all the alternate data streams for the file). In these cases it's impossible for the IO manager to know what the required size might be without querying the file system and so file systems and file system filters will receive requests with what is possibly an insufficient buffer size (there are apps that allocate huge buffer just to avoid reissuing a request, but there are many callers that don't do that; I generally prefer to issue a request with enough buffer in cases where that's possible, for example most files don't have Alternate Data Streams so it's possible to calculate the size of the buffer). Those requests will be failed by the file system (or filter) with the STATUS_BUFFER_OVERFLOW status (which is actually a warning, not an error!). However, different information classes have different requirements about how the structure has to be populated in such cases. There are some structures (like FILE_NAME_INFORMATION) that have a field where the caller can fill in the required size so that the caller can just allocate a buffer of the appropriate size and resend the request. Other structures don't have any such field (like FILE_STREAM_INFORMATION) and so any caller must simply increase the size of the buffer without knowing in advance if it will be sufficient (I personally double the size of the buffer for each iteration but there are other ways of doing it) and then they must issue the request and see whether it was enough. Finally, there are certain requirements for each information class about how to fill in the buffer even in the event when the request is going to be failed with STATUS_BUFFER_OVERFLOW. For example, for FileNameInformation the buffer must be filled with as many characters as will fit the buffer whereas the FILE_STREAM_INFORMATION must be filled only with complete records. These type of requirements make it necessary for whoever completes the request to be able to specify how much of the buffer actually contains real information. This can be achieved by setting the IoStatus.Information member to the number of bytes to return the caller. The IO manager will then copy the specified number of bytes to the caller's buffer. It is very important to get this right because returning a larger number here will result in the IO manager copying more bytes than were actually written by the file system or filter and is a security problem. For more details on this see Doron's post on How to return the number of bytes required for a subsequent operation. Of course, the specifics of how the buffer must be set up for each class are documented in the pages for each information class or associated structure, so whenever dealing with this subject make sure to re-read those pages and pay great attention to the details. I wanted to show some more code on how to do this, but there is plenty of code that shows how this is done in the file system sources that come with the WDK. I found the CDFS sources to be a bit more clear for this specific topic, where CdCommonQueryInfo pretty much does it all and shows exactly how to set things for most information classes. FastFat can be a bit more convoluted at times. Finally, I want to say that whenever I have to deal with this I find it extremely useful to just use FileTest and then query the information class I want while supplying different sized buffers (starting with 1 byte, then 2 bytes and so on) and make sure that I understand exactly what the file system returns without my filter present and how things look with the filter installed.0: kd> u nt!NtQueryInformationFile+0x36 L0xB nt!NtQueryInformationFile+0x36: 82aa87dc 8b4518 mov eax,dword ptr [ebp+18h] 82aa87df 83f838 cmp eax,38h 82aa87e2 7377 jae nt!NtQueryInformationFile+0xb5 (82aa885b) 82aa87e4 8a80d4a0a782 mov al,byte ptr nt!IopQueryOperationLength (82a7a0d4)[eax] 82aa87ea 84c0 test al,al 82aa87ec 746d je nt!NtQueryInformationFile+0xb5 (82aa885b) 82aa87ee 0fb6c0 movzx eax,al 82aa87f1 394514 cmp dword ptr [ebp+14h],eax 82aa87f4 730a jae nt!NtQueryInformationFile+0x5a (82aa8800) 82aa87f6 b8040000c0 mov eax,0C0000004h 82aa87fb e98e080000 jmp nt!NtQueryInformationFile+0x8e3 (82aa908e)
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Mount Point Resolution with FltGetFileNameInformation - Part II
In the previous post I showed a couple of examples of how FltMgr handles mount point resolution. I also ran into a problem where querying for the normalized name during preCreate for a path that would traverse a mountpoint failed, and I promised I would investigate and post my findings. In this post I will explain what I found and how I went about it (which might be interesting for someone that doesn't have a lot of experience debugging the workings of fltmgr or other kernel components).
So first, let me explain my findings. As a quick refresher, FltMgr performs name normalization by taking an opened name for a file (like C:\foo~1\bar~2.txt) and opening the parent directory (C:\foo~1) and then querying the directory (via the directory enumeration call) for the file name (bar~2.txt). FltMgr uses one of the directory structures that returns the long name for the file (like FILE_BOTH_DIR_INFORMATION or FILE_NAMES_INFORMATION) and then copies the long name for the file (let's say it is BarBarBar.txt). It then does the same for current directory name (for C:\foo~1 it would open C:\ and query for foo~1 and get back FooFooFoo) and then assembles everything back together into C:\FooFooFoo\BarBarBar.txt. Now, this process will fail with STATUS_NOT_SAME_DEVICE if when trying to open a parent directory (C:\foo~1) FltMgr encounters a reparse point that reparses to a different volume. The relevant code is this:
So first, let me explain my findings. As a quick refresher, FltMgr performs name normalization by taking an opened name for a file (like C:\foo~1\bar~2.txt) and opening the parent directory (C:\foo~1) and then querying the directory (via the directory enumeration call) for the file name (bar~2.txt). FltMgr uses one of the directory structures that returns the long name for the file (like FILE_BOTH_DIR_INFORMATION or FILE_NAMES_INFORMATION) and then copies the long name for the file (let's say it is BarBarBar.txt). It then does the same for current directory name (for C:\foo~1 it would open C:\ and query for foo~1 and get back FooFooFoo) and then assembles everything back together into C:\FooFooFoo\BarBarBar.txt. Now, this process will fail with STATUS_NOT_SAME_DEVICE if when trying to open a parent directory (C:\foo~1) FltMgr encounters a reparse point that reparses to a different volume. The relevant code is this:
0: kd> u fltmgr!FltpExpandFilePathWorker+0x29e
fltmgr!FltpExpandFilePathWorker+0x29e:
96034a1c ff154c030296 call dword ptr [fltmgr!_imp__IoGetAttachedDevice (9602034c)]
96034a22 ff765c push dword ptr [esi+5Ch]
96034a25 8bf8 mov edi,eax
96034a27 ff1548010296 call dword ptr [fltmgr!_imp__IoGetRelatedDeviceObject (96020148)]
96034a2d 3bc7 cmp eax,edi
96034a2f 740c je fltmgr!FltpExpandFilePathWorker+0x2bf (96034a3d)
96034a31 c74508d40000c0 mov dword ptr [ebp+8],0C00000D4h
96034a38 e9e8feffff jmp fltmgr!FltpExpandFilePathWorker+0x1a7 (96034925)
As you can see, FltMgr compares two devices, the one on which the IRP_MJ_CREATE to open the parent directory was issued and the one where it was actually opened on, and if they don't match it will fail with STATUS_NOT_SAME_DEVICE (which is an interesting and confusing choice since the actual error message (from ntstatus.h) is "The target file of a rename request is located on a different device than the source of the rename request." and there is no rename involved). There are a couple of interesting points to make:- This should only impact preCreate queries since after the IRP_MJ_CREATE completes successfully we are on the final volume and so the opened file name can't traverse any reparse points (as discussed in my previous post on this subject). So in postCreate (and this implies a successful create) there will be no reparse points to traverse.
- The other interesting thing to note is that FltMgr actually issues its IRP_MJ_CREATE violating the file system filter layering rules, in that it sends the request to the top of the IO stack. It does this with the explicit goal of being able to survive reparses to other volumes (like I've discussed elsewhere on this blog). However, it then checks to figure out if it actually ended up on a different volume and fails the operation, which would have happened anyway if they targeted the IRP_MJ_CREATE properly. The only case where this might actually work and the proper layering of the IRP_MJ_CREATE would have failed is where there multiple reparses that eventually end up on the original volume where the IRP_MJ_CREATE was issued on (so you'd have C:\foo~1 reparse to D:\bar~1 which would in turn reparse back to C:\baz~1). This would fail with proper layering of the IRP_MJ_CREATE because the first reparse (from C:\ to D:\) would fail, but it would work with the current implementation because the request is targeted at C:\ and the directory that is opened eventually is on C:\ as well). However, I doubt that this behavior is what FltMgr's designers had in mind and instead I tend to believe that violating the layering in this case was unnecessary.
As you can see, when the call to FltGetFileNameInformation fails I've added a breakpoint and then I retry the operation with the exact same parameters, which allows me to investigate the call. After that, when the breakpoint triggers, I do this:if (PtDoRequestOperationStatus( Data )) { status = FltRequestOperationStatusCallback( Data, PtOperationStatusCallback, (PVOID)(++OperationStatusCtx) ); if (!NT_SUCCESS(status)) { PT_DBG_PRINT( PTDBG_TRACE_OPERATION_STATUS, ("PassThrough!PtPreOperationPassThrough: FltRequestOperationStatusCallback Failed, status=%08x\n", status) ); } } if (Data->Iopb->MajorFunction == IRP_MJ_CREATE) { status = FltGetFileNameInformation( Data, FLT_FILE_NAME_NORMALIZED, &fileName ); if (NT_SUCCESS(status)) { DbgPrint("preCreate|normalized -> \"%wZ\"\n", &fileName->Name); FltReleaseFileNameInformation( fileName ); } else { DbgBreakPoint(); status = FltGetFileNameInformation( Data, FLT_FILE_NAME_NORMALIZED, &fileName ); }
So now I know that the STATUS_NOT_SAME_DEVICE error came from the call to fltmgr!FltpGetFileNameInformation. Time to continue this investigation, but this time looking into that function:Break instruction exception - code 80000003 (first chance) <- here I've hit the breakpoint PassThrough!PtPreOperationPassThrough+0xd2: a414c0f2 cc int 3 0: kd> p <- step over the breakpoint PassThrough!PtPreOperationPassThrough+0xd3: a414c0f3 8d45f8 lea eax,[ebp-8] 0: kd> t <- trace into the function fltmgr!FltGetFileNameInformation: 9601ce78 8bff mov edi,edi 0: kd> pc <- find the next call fltmgr!FltGetFileNameInformation+0x118: 9601cf90 e833010000 call fltmgr!FltpAllocateInitializeNameGenerationContext (9601d0c8) 0: kd> p <- and step over it fltmgr!FltGetFileNameInformation+0x11d: 9601cf95 8bf0 mov esi,eax 0: kd> r <- and now inspect the registers. In this calling convention eax will be the NTSTATUS , so eax = 00000000 means STATUS_SUCCESS eax=00000000 ebx=92639008 ecx=944f6ae0 edx=944f6ae0 esi=92639068 edi=00000000 eip=9601cf95 esp=a194d96c ebp=a194d988 iopl=0 nv up ei pl zr na pe nc cs=0008 ss=0010 ds=0023 es=0023 fs=0030 gs=0000 efl=00000246 fltmgr!FltGetFileNameInformation+0x11d: 9601cf95 8bf0 mov esi,eax 0: kd> pc <- ok, find the next call fltmgr!FltGetFileNameInformation+0x126: 9601cf9e e85df8ffff call fltmgr!FltpGetFileNameInformation (9601c800) 0: kd> p <- step over it fltmgr!FltGetFileNameInformation+0x12b: 9601cfa3 8bf0 mov esi,eax 0: kd> r <- inspect the result again and note that eax=c00000d4, which happens to be STATUS_NOT_SAME_DEVICE . eax=c00000d4 ebx=92639008 ecx=00000000 edx=00000003 esi=00000000 edi=00000000 eip=9601cfa3 esp=a194d96c ebp=a194d988 iopl=0 nv up ei pl zr na pe nc cs=0008 ss=0010 ds=0023 es=0023 fs=0030 gs=0000 efl=00000246 fltmgr!FltGetFileNameInformation+0x12b: 9601cfa3 8bf0 mov esi,eax
After a couple of iterations (in about 5 minutes of debugging) we end up with this stack, where the status is actually generated.:0: kd> g <- hit go and trigger the condition (which in my case was trying to traverse a mountpoint so I just did a notepad C:\mnt\foo.txt, where C:\mnt was a mount point) Break instruction exception - code 80000003 (first chance) PassThrough!PtPreOperationPassThrough+0xd2: a414c0f2 cc int 3 <- so I hit the breakpoint again, as expected. 0: kd> bp /t @$thread fltmgr!FltpGetFileNameInformation <- set a threaded breakpoint on the function where I know the failure should happen. The thread is useful when a function is called from multiple threads and I don't want the breakpoint to trigger for those. 0: kd> g <- hit go and we should hit the breakpoint when the current thread enters that function Breakpoint 0 hit <- and so it is... fltmgr!FltpGetFileNameInformation: 9601c800 8bff mov edi,edi 0: kd> bc * <- clear the breakpoint . This is sometimes necessary because if there is recursion it will hit again on the same thread and might confuse things 0: kd> pc <- find the first call fltmgr!FltpGetFileNameInformation+0x48: 9601c848 e8db9bffff call fltmgr!FltpGetNextCallbackNodeForInstance (96016428) 0: kd> p <- and step over to see the status fltmgr!FltpGetFileNameInformation+0x4d: 9601c84d 894614 mov dword ptr [esi+14h],eax 0: kd> r <- check the status, which is STATUS_SUCCESS eax=00000000 ebx=92639008 ecx=9444cd48 edx=00000000 esi=94501858 edi=00000000 eip=9601c84d esp=a194d864 ebp=a194d888 iopl=0 nv up ei pl zr na pe nc cs=0008 ss=0010 ds=0023 es=0023 fs=0030 gs=0000 efl=00000246 fltmgr!FltpGetFileNameInformation+0x4d: 9601c84d 894614 mov dword ptr [esi+14h],eax ds:0023:9450186c=00000000 0: kd> pc <- find the next call fltmgr!FltpGetFileNameInformation+0x5a: 9601c85a e8c99bffff call fltmgr!FltpGetNextCallbackNodeForInstance (96016428) 0: kd> p <- step again fltmgr!FltpGetFileNameInformation+0x5f: 9601c85f 894618 mov dword ptr [esi+18h],eax 0: kd> r <- STATUS_SUCCESS again eax=00000000 ebx=92639008 ecx=9444cd48 edx=00000000 esi=94501858 edi=00000000 eip=9601c85f esp=a194d864 ebp=a194d888 iopl=0 nv up ei pl zr na pe nc cs=0008 ss=0010 ds=0023 es=0023 fs=0030 gs=0000 efl=00000246 fltmgr!FltpGetFileNameInformation+0x5f: 9601c85f 894618 mov dword ptr [esi+18h],eax ds:0023:94501870=00000000 0: kd> pc <- and then the next call fltmgr!FltpGetFileNameInformation+0xb2: 9601c8b2 e829160000 call fltmgr!FltpGetStreamListCtrl (9601dee0) 0: kd> p fltmgr!FltpGetFileNameInformation+0xb7: 9601c8b7 894508 mov dword ptr [ebp+8],eax 0: kd> r <- this fails with STATUS_NOT_SUPPORTED. This might be a failure that gets converted into the one we're looking for. I investigated it (not shown here) but it doesn't result in a failure, it just changes the code path through the function eax=c00000bb ebx=92639008 ecx=9601e0a8 edx=00000000 esi=94501858 edi=00000000 eip=9601c8b7 esp=a194d864 ebp=a194d888 iopl=0 nv up ei pl zr na pe nc cs=0008 ss=0010 ds=0023 es=0023 fs=0030 gs=0000 efl=00000246 fltmgr!FltpGetFileNameInformation+0xb7: 9601c8b7 894508 mov dword ptr [ebp+8],eax ss:0010:a194d890=94501858 0: kd> pc <-find the next call fltmgr!FltpGetFileNameInformation+0xc2: 9601c8c2 e887fdffff call fltmgr!HandleStreamListNotSupported (9601c64e) 0: kd> p <- step over fltmgr!FltpGetFileNameInformation+0xc7: 9601c8c7 894508 mov dword ptr [ebp+8],eax 0: kd> r <- and we can see that we've hit the status we wanted, eax=c00000d4. so now we know the failure comes from fltmgr!HandleStreamListNotSupported, so set a breakpoint on it. eax=c00000d4 ebx=92639008 ecx=00000000 edx=00000003 esi=94501858 edi=00000000 eip=9601c8c7 esp=a194d864 ebp=a194d888 iopl=0 nv up ei pl nz na po nc cs=0008 ss=0010 ds=0023 es=0023 fs=0030 gs=0000 efl=00000202 fltmgr!FltpGetFileNameInformation+0xc7: 9601c8c7 894508 mov dword ptr [ebp+8],eax ss:0010:a194d890=c00000bb 0: kd> g <- so now we need to go back to trigger the breakpoint Break instruction exception - code 80000003 (first chance) PassThrough!PtPreOperationPassThrough+0xd2: a414c0f2 cc int 3 0: kd> bp /t@$thread fltmgr!HandleStreamListNotSupported <- set our threaded breakpoint on that function 0: kd> g <- and run Breakpoint 0 hit fltmgr!HandleStreamListNotSupported: 9601c64e 8bff mov edi,edi
0: kd> k ChildEBP RetAddr a194d8ac 96034c59 fltmgr!FltpExpandFilePathWorker+0x2b3 a194d8c4 96034dc3 fltmgr!FltpExpandFilePath+0x19 a194d8e0 96035505 fltmgr!FltpGetNormalizedFileNameWorker+0x7d a194d8f8 96032765 fltmgr!FltpGetNormalizedFileName+0x19 a194d910 9601c773 fltmgr!FltpCreateFileNameInformation+0x81 a194d930 9601c8c7 fltmgr!HandleStreamListNotSupported+0x125 a194d960 9601cfa3 fltmgr!FltpGetFileNameInformation+0xc7 a194d988 a414c102 fltmgr!FltGetFileNameInformation+0x12b a194d9ac 96016aeb PassThrough!PtPreOperationPassThrough+0xe2 [c:\temp11\passthrough\passthrough.c @ 705] a194da18 960199f0 fltmgr!FltpPerformPreCallbacks+0x34d a194da30 9602d1fe fltmgr!FltpPassThroughInternal+0x40 a194da44 9602d8b7 fltmgr!FltpCreateInternal+0x24 a194da88 828884bc fltmgr!FltpCreate+0x2c9 a194daa0 82a8c6ad nt!IofCallDriver+0x63 a194db78 82a6d26b nt!IopParseDevice+0xed7 a194dbf4 82a932d9 nt!ObpLookupObjectName+0x4fa a194dc50 82a8b62b nt!ObOpenObjectByName+0x165 a194dccc 82ac667e nt!IopCreateFile+0x673 a194dd14 8288f44a nt!NtOpenFile+0x2a a194dd14 776064f4 nt!KiFastCallEntry+0x12a WARNING: Stack unwind information not available. Following frames may be wrong.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Mount Point Resolution in FltGetFileNameInformation
In this post I'd like to discuss one particular aspect of using FltGetFileNameInformation and how mount point resolution is handled. The issue I want to talk about is mentioned in the documentation for the FLT_FILE_NAME_INFORMATION structure, where in the Remarks section it says that a name is normalized if all the mount points are resolved. This was mentioned in the context of the OSR thread http://www.osronline.com/showThread.CFM?link=230176, where it was suggested that the definition means that opened names would not resolve mount points (see the discussion starting at message 21).
So the plan is to discuss how mount points work and how name normalization works in this context and what's the actual behavior for mount point resolution for normalized and opened names.
A mount point is a special type of reparse point, where it reparses from a directory to the root of a volume. A typical scenario would be mounting a volume like \Device\HarddiskVolume4\ as a folder under \Device\HarddiskVolume3\mnt\ (the volume names are actual names that I'm going to use in my examples later). This can be easily done using mountvol.exe, like so:
So what happens when someone tries to open D:\mnt\foo.txt ? Here are the steps, and pretty much most of this has been explained in other posts on this site, mainly around STATUS_REPARSE and IRP_MJ_CREATE processing:
The Normalize step is pretty simple so we'll discuss it first. FltMgr opens the parent directory for the name it has from the Generate step and does a directory query to get the long name associated with the file (or directory). It doesn't know if the name it has for the file is short or long and it doesn't really matter, it will figure it out from the directory query anyway. It then concatenates this with the normalized name for the parent directory. If it doesn't have the normalized name for the parent directory cached it will build it using the same algorithm. Please note that this is different in Win8, where NTFS can directly return the normalized name for a file. Also, this can explain why it can be pretty expensive to generate a normalized name, though FltMgr's name cache is pretty effective and so in most cases there is no need to perform the normalization of the parent directory name.
The Generate step differs between the time when the file isn't opened (preCreate) and the time after the file is opened (postCreate and all operations after that). If the file isn't opened FltMgr will take the name from the FILE_OBJECT->FileName and the RelatedFileObject (if there is one). If the file is opened then FltMgr will simply query NTFS for the file name using an IRP_MJ_QUERY_INFORMATION request. Please note that the OPENED name is actually the name FltMgr gets from the Generate step.
So now that all the pieces are in place, let's discuss the differences between the opened and the normalized name:
Now let's look at what happens when we open something directly under the mount point (pretty much the same as above):
So the plan is to discuss how mount points work and how name normalization works in this context and what's the actual behavior for mount point resolution for normalized and opened names.
A mount point is a special type of reparse point, where it reparses from a directory to the root of a volume. A typical scenario would be mounting a volume like \Device\HarddiskVolume4\ as a folder under \Device\HarddiskVolume3\mnt\ (the volume names are actual names that I'm going to use in my examples later). This can be easily done using mountvol.exe, like so:
C:\>mountvol.exe
Creates, deletes, or lists a volume mount point.
....
....
Possible values for VolumeName along with current mount points are:
\\?\Volume{a681bf9c-c97b-11de-90d7-806e6f6e6963}\
*** NO MOUNT POINTS ***
\\?\Volume{f4810a4e-cfbb-11de-86cd-000c291f01a1}\
D:\
\\?\Volume{f4810a5a-cfbb-11de-86cd-000c291f01a1}\
E:\
\\?\Volume{a681bf9d-c97b-11de-90d7-806e6f6e6963}\
C:\
\\?\Volume{a681bfa1-c97b-11de-90d7-806e6f6e6963}\
A:\
\\?\Volume{a681bfa0-c97b-11de-90d7-806e6f6e6963}\
F:\
C:\>mountvol.exe D:\mnt \\?\Volume{f4810a5a-cfbb-11de-86cd-000c291f01a1}\
C:\>mountvol.exe
Creates, deletes, or lists a volume mount point.
....
....
Possible values for VolumeName along with current mount points are:
\\?\Volume{a681bf9c-c97b-11de-90d7-806e6f6e6963}\
*** NO MOUNT POINTS ***
\\?\Volume{f4810a4e-cfbb-11de-86cd-000c291f01a1}\
D:\
\\?\Volume{f4810a5a-cfbb-11de-86cd-000c291f01a1}\
E:\
D:\mnt\
\\?\Volume{a681bf9d-c97b-11de-90d7-806e6f6e6963}\
C:\
\\?\Volume{a681bfa1-c97b-11de-90d7-806e6f6e6963}\
A:\
\\?\Volume{a681bfa0-c97b-11de-90d7-806e6f6e6963}\
F:\
Please note that I can still use both E:\ and D:\mnt\ to access the volume. One could also remove the E:\ mount point and rely only on D:\mnt\.
So what happens when someone tries to open D:\mnt\foo.txt ? Here are the steps, and pretty much most of this has been explained in other posts on this site, mainly around STATUS_REPARSE and IRP_MJ_CREATE processing:
- the IO manager issues an IRP_MJ_CREATE for the volume that is D: (\Device\HarddiskVolume3) with the FILE_OBJECT->FileName set to "\mnt\foo.txt"
- NTFS sees there is a reparse point on "\mnt" and returns the new path for the file, concatenating the name of the volume in the reparse point with the rest of the path, as "\Device\HarddiskVolume4\FOO.TXT"
- the IO manager issues a new IRP_MJ_CREATE for the volume that is E: (\Device\HarddiskVolume4) with the FILE_OBJECT->FileName set to "\foo.txt", which succeeds.
The Normalize step is pretty simple so we'll discuss it first. FltMgr opens the parent directory for the name it has from the Generate step and does a directory query to get the long name associated with the file (or directory). It doesn't know if the name it has for the file is short or long and it doesn't really matter, it will figure it out from the directory query anyway. It then concatenates this with the normalized name for the parent directory. If it doesn't have the normalized name for the parent directory cached it will build it using the same algorithm. Please note that this is different in Win8, where NTFS can directly return the normalized name for a file. Also, this can explain why it can be pretty expensive to generate a normalized name, though FltMgr's name cache is pretty effective and so in most cases there is no need to perform the normalization of the parent directory name.
The Generate step differs between the time when the file isn't opened (preCreate) and the time after the file is opened (postCreate and all operations after that). If the file isn't opened FltMgr will take the name from the FILE_OBJECT->FileName and the RelatedFileObject (if there is one). If the file is opened then FltMgr will simply query NTFS for the file name using an IRP_MJ_QUERY_INFORMATION request. Please note that the OPENED name is actually the name FltMgr gets from the Generate step.
So now that all the pieces are in place, let's discuss the differences between the opened and the normalized name:
- If the file is opened (so after a successful postCreate and for any operation where the FILE_OBJECT is opened) the name will always have the mount point resolved because during the Generate step FltMgr will simply concatenate the volume name with the path to the file that NTFS returns.
- If this is a postCreate but the status is STATUS_REPARSE FltGetFileNameInformation will fail with STATUS_FLT_INVALID_NAME_REQUEST, so the issue of the mount point resolution doesn't apply.
- The one case that remains is that of a preCreate, then whether mount points are resolved depends on whether this is the final IRP_MJ_CREATE or not. If it is the final IRP_MJ_CREATE then IO manager has already resolved the mount points so the opened name and the normalized name will have the same volume name. If this is not the final IRP_MJ_CREATE then the opened name will always have the volume name on which the IRP_MJ_CREATE was issued, and the normalized name will always use the name it has when opening the parent folder for the final component. This last bit is interesting because it's not clear what happens when opening the actual mount point. Will it be resolved or not ? It depends on how the query for the normalization is done, if necessary.
Things to note here are the fact that there are no names from the postCreate for the first creates since they fail with STATUS_FLT_INVALID_NAME_REQUEST because those creates aren't successful. Also, interesting to note that for the first create (for which we get the opened name) trying to get the normalized name fails with STATUS_NOT_SAME_DEVICE on my system. Not sure why but I'll investigate it for next week's blog :).preCreate|opened -> "\Device\HarddiskVolume3\mnt\folder_under_mount_point\foo.txt" -> as expected, mount point not resolved. preCreate|normalized -> "\Device\HarddiskVolume4\folder_under_mount_point\foo.txt" -> this is after the reparse, so mount point is resolved. preCreate|opened -> "\Device\HarddiskVolume4\FOLDER_UNDER_MOUNT_POINT\FOO.TXT" -> after reparse, so no mount point. Please note the case. postCreate|normalized -> "\Device\HarddiskVolume4\folder_under_mount_point\foo.txt" -> normalize gets the actual proper case from NTFS postCreate|opened -> "\Device\HarddiskVolume4\FOLDER_UNDER_MOUNT_POINT\FOO.TXT" -> but the opened name has the original case from the user's request.
Now let's look at what happens when we open something directly under the mount point (pretty much the same as above):
And finally I want to show you what happens if I try to open the actual mount point itself, D:\mnt\.preCreate|opened -> "\Device\HarddiskVolume3\mnt\foo.txt" -> as expected, mount point not resolved. preCreate|normalized -> "\Device\HarddiskVolume4\foo.txt" -> and again, after reparse, mount point resolved. preCreate|opened -> "\Device\HarddiskVolume4\FOO.TXT" postCreate|normalized -> "\Device\HarddiskVolume4\foo.txt" postCreate|opened -> "\Device\HarddiskVolume4\FOO.TXT"
Hopefully this shows what's going on with mount point resolution and opened and normalized names, in more detail that anyone ever needed :).preCreate|normalized -> "\Device\HarddiskVolume3\mnt" -> please note how the normalized name in this case is actually the mount point, so the mount point is NOT resolved. preCreate|opened -> "\Device\HarddiskVolume3\mnt\" -> naturally, mount point not resolved since this is the opened name. preCreate|normalized -> "\Device\HarddiskVolume4\" preCreate|opened -> "\Device\HarddiskVolume4\" postCreate|normalized -> "\Device\HarddiskVolume4\" postCreate|opened -> "\Device\HarddiskVolume4\"
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Testing Case-Sensitive Behavior
In this post I want to talk about case sensitivity and how to test such behavior for file systems and file system filters. I've addressed various case-sensitive file system filter specific topics in my previous posts on FILE_OBJECT Names in IRP_MJ_CREATE and on Names in Minifilters - Implementing Name Provider Callbacks.
This isn't a particular complicated subject but a developer must be careful in their implementation to support this concept. Other than figuring out the case sensitivity of the name in the IRP_MJ_CREATE path and in the name provider paths, a developer must in general pay attention to their implementation so that if, for example, they compare names or file extensions and they would use RtlEqualUnicodeString or RtlCompareUnicodeString then they must use the appropriate value for the CaseInSensitive parameter, deduced from the IRP_MJ_CREATE parameters or from the FILE_OBJECT flags. Also, when dealing with UNICODE_STRINGs, one should never try to change the case by directly touching the bits in the string, and instead always use functions like RtlUpcaseUnicodeString and RtlUpcaseUnicodeChar (and their counterparts, RtlDowncaseUnicodeString and RtlDowncaseUnicodeChar).
However, for this post I don't want to focus on implementation but on how to test this. In my opinion the best place to start is the IFS Test suite, since it has a lot of tests that deal with the create path, and in particular some that test both case sensitive behavior and case preserving behavior. However, when running this test on a regular system it will most likely fail with this message:
So anyway, once you set this key make sure that the file system itself is case sensitive and then test your filter like you normally would, though it might be a good idea to add a couple of tests with files that have the same name with different cases, just to make sure you're exercising the relevant code paths. For example, if implementing an anti-virus program it might be interesting to test with a clean file with the name "foo.txt" and the EICAR file "Foo.txt" in the same folder, to make sure that not only the scanning happens on the apropriate file, but also that the other parts of the program (such as the quarantine engine or the cleaning engine) work as expected. Another good test is to then switch file names (so that "Foo.txt" is clean and "foo.txt" is the EICAR file), so that in case the product somehow depends on the sorting order in the directory that issue can be found and addressed. Finally, this is an easy way to check that the file system is case sensitive (UPDATE: as Phil pointed out in the comments, this doesn't mean that the requests are going to be case sensitive, it simply means the file system supports it; whether this is on or off generally depends on the file system implementation and not the registry key value):
This isn't a particular complicated subject but a developer must be careful in their implementation to support this concept. Other than figuring out the case sensitivity of the name in the IRP_MJ_CREATE path and in the name provider paths, a developer must in general pay attention to their implementation so that if, for example, they compare names or file extensions and they would use RtlEqualUnicodeString or RtlCompareUnicodeString then they must use the appropriate value for the CaseInSensitive parameter, deduced from the IRP_MJ_CREATE parameters or from the FILE_OBJECT flags. Also, when dealing with UNICODE_STRINGs, one should never try to change the case by directly touching the bits in the string, and instead always use functions like RtlUpcaseUnicodeString and RtlUpcaseUnicodeChar (and their counterparts, RtlDowncaseUnicodeString and RtlDowncaseUnicodeChar).
However, for this post I don't want to focus on implementation but on how to test this. In my opinion the best place to start is the IFS Test suite, since it has a lot of tests that deal with the create path, and in particular some that test both case sensitive behavior and case preserving behavior. However, when running this test on a regular system it will most likely fail with this message:
E94.E98 : +TEST+SEV2 : Test :CaseSensitiveTest
Group :OpenCreateGeneral
Status :C000001E (IFSTEST_TEST_NTAPI_FAILURE_CODE)
LastNtStatus :C0000035 STATUS_OBJECT_NAME_COLLISION
ExpectedNtStatus :00000000 STATUS_SUCCESS
Description :{Msg# OpCreatG!casesen!14} Failure while creating a
test file \casesen\NeSesac.dat. Note that in a previous
step we created another test file. That other test
file \casesen\nesesac.dat, differs from this one by
the case of the name.
Lookup Query : http://www.microsoft.com/ContentRedirect.asp?prd=IFSKit&id=OpCreatG!casesen!14&pver=2195
This happens because by default Windows is case insensitive and so naturally the case sensitivity test fails. In order to enable case sensitive behavior for Windows all you need to do is change this registry value (it should be 1 be default so change it to 0):
BTW, this is described in Microsoft's KB 817921, even though the case deals with something else entirely.HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\kernel\obcaseinsensitive
So anyway, once you set this key make sure that the file system itself is case sensitive and then test your filter like you normally would, though it might be a good idea to add a couple of tests with files that have the same name with different cases, just to make sure you're exercising the relevant code paths. For example, if implementing an anti-virus program it might be interesting to test with a clean file with the name "foo.txt" and the EICAR file "Foo.txt" in the same folder, to make sure that not only the scanning happens on the apropriate file, but also that the other parts of the program (such as the quarantine engine or the cleaning engine) work as expected. Another good test is to then switch file names (so that "Foo.txt" is clean and "foo.txt" is the EICAR file), so that in case the product somehow depends on the sorting order in the directory that issue can be found and addressed. Finally, this is an easy way to check that the file system is case sensitive (UPDATE: as Phil pointed out in the comments, this doesn't mean that the requests are going to be case sensitive, it simply means the file system supports it; whether this is on or off generally depends on the file system implementation and not the registry key value):
C:\Windows\system32>fsutil fsinfo volumeinfo C:
Volume Name : System
Volume Serial Number : 0x4297004a
Max Component Length : 255
File System Name : NTFS
Supports Case-sensitive filenames
Preserves Case of filenames
Supports Unicode in filenames
Preserves & Enforces ACL's
Supports file-based Compression
Supports Disk Quotas
Supports Sparse files
Supports Reparse Points
Supports Object Identifiers
Supports Encrypted File System
Supports Named Streams
Supports Transactions
Supports Hard Links
Supports Extended Attributes
Supports Open By FileID
Supports USN Journal
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Detaching Instances and FLTFL_POST_OPERATION_DRAINING
I've recently realized that FLTFL_POST_OPERATION_DRAINING is not a very well understood feature. This is even though it is pretty well documented on the page for the PFLT_POST_OPERATION_CALLBACK function. So I think that in addition to the documentation page it might help to take a look at what happens under the hood.
So once a minifilter instance attaches to a volume it will start receiving IRPs and the filter will process them. There are many cases where filters need to process the results of the operation after the file system has completed it so the filter would register PostOperation callbacks and the filter would return an appropriate status to indicate that it wants a that PostOp callback called for each specific operation. These IRPs are generally called in-flight requests and in many cases the filter has data allocated associated with the operation (buffers allocated and possibly even replaced on the request, contexts that are sent from the PreOp callback to the PostOp callback, references (if the filter references a context in PreOp and dereferences it in PostOp) and so on). In case the instance needs to be detached (the minifilter is unloaded or just one instance is detached from the underlying volume) from a live volume, IO will continue to flow on the volume. One way to detach is to stop receiving new IO requests and then just wait for all the in-flight operations to be completed by the file system. Once all the in-flight operations have completed then FltMgr can pretty much free the instance because there can not be any more IO on it.
Unfortunately, this approach has a pretty big disadvantage. It is impossible to predict when the file system will complete all in-flight IRPs. There are certain operations that are very long-lived (for example, the directory change notification IRPs can be held in the file system indefinitely) which would make the time it takes to unload a filter or to detach an instance completely unpredictable. FltMgr howver is smarter than that and what it actually does is that it always tracks for each instance which operations are in-flight at any given time. So when an instance needs to be detached or a filter unloaded, FltMgr can actually know that it doesn't need to call any PostOp callbacks for that filter or that instance. However, there is still data associated with the request, buffers that have been replaced, contexts that are allocated and so on. If FltMgr simply stops calling the PostOp callbacks for all in-flight operations then the allocated data and the buffers would never be freed and the references would be leaked.
This is where FLTFL_POST_OPERATION_DRAINING comes in. When an instance is detached, FltMgr disconnects the instances from the IO path and then calls each PostOp callback for all the in-flight operations with the FLTFL_POST_OPERATION_DRAINING flag set. When a PostOp callback is called with FLTFL_POST_OPERATION_DRAINING flag the callback must not do any actual work (like checking the status of the operation or touching the FLT_CALLBACK_DATA structure at all) and instead the filter must just release any buffers or references they might have allocated. For most filters this is generally similar to what they do when the operation is unsuccessful (though there might be cases where this is different so this is more of a hint than an actual guideline to implement this feature). It is important to note that when the PostOp callback is called with the FLTFL_POST_OPERATION_DRAINING flag the actual operation might have already been completed or it might still be in the file system somewhere so the filter must not make any assumptions about the status of the actual operation.
Thursday, July 12, 2012
The Flags of FILE_OBJECTs - Part V
I wasn't really planning on adding another part to the series but there were still a couple of things I wanted to mention.
First, as I'm sure you've noticed if you looked at the actual flag values in the wdm.h file, there seems to be a flag missing, with the value 0x00800000, which would put it between FO_VOLUME_OPEN and FO_REMOTE_ORIGIN. Well, the easiest way to solve this mystery is to look at an older DDK where you'll find the missing flag:
Anyway, this FILE_OBJECT extension seems to have been used to implement the same functionality that FsRtlInsertPerFileObjectContext provides today. FltMgr's designers had a goal to make sure that everything that FltMgr does can be implemented by a 3rd party filter and so since they couldn't expect 3rd party filters to modify private OS structures they had exposed the same functionality through the FSRTL_PER_FILEOBJECT_CONTEXT structure and related functions (FsRtlInitPerFileObjectContext, FsRtlInsertPerFileObjectContext, FsRtlLookupPerFileObjectContext, FsRtlRemovePerFileObjectContext). Since this is implemented in a different way today it makes sense that this flag is obsolete for now. Please do note, however, that it's entirely possible that it will be reused at some point in the future.
Another thing I wanted to do was to take a closer look at how the FO_DISALLOW_EXCLUSIVE flag can be used, since as I mentioned in my previous post in the series I wasn't sure what it does. Well, after some investigation I have some idea what it does but I'm not sure why exactly this behavior would be desired. So first I'd like to mention that this flag doesn't seem to be used anywhere in the WDK, neither FastFat nor CDFS seem to need it. I couldn't find anything about it online. Naturally I searched for both FO_DISALLOW_EXCLUSIVE and FILE_DISALLOW_EXCLUSIVE but there was really no mention about what they might do or where they might be used. However, there was one bit of information in the WDK that helped a lot: the fact that FO_DISALLOW_EXCLUSIVE is the only flag defined for FO_FLAGS_VALID_ONLY_DURING_CREATE. So I decided to take a very close look at Ntfs' IRP_MJ_CREATE processing in the hope that I might be able to figure out where this flag might be used.
So after some debugging and using my favorite disassembler, IDA, I've been able to find a couple of places where this flag might be checked. In particular the Ntfs!NtfsOpenAttribute function looked very promising since it had code that checked for that exact value, and moreover it was using the same offset into a structure that the FILE_OBJECT->Flags are at:
As I said before I'm not sure why this is useful, so if you know a scenario where this might be useful please add a comment and enlighten me :). Anyway, this is what I've been to figure out about this flag so I hope it helps...
First, as I'm sure you've noticed if you looked at the actual flag values in the wdm.h file, there seems to be a flag missing, with the value 0x00800000, which would put it between FO_VOLUME_OPEN and FO_REMOTE_ORIGIN. Well, the easiest way to solve this mystery is to look at an older DDK where you'll find the missing flag:
- FO_FILE_OBJECT_HAS_EXTENSION - 0x00800000
Anyway, this FILE_OBJECT extension seems to have been used to implement the same functionality that FsRtlInsertPerFileObjectContext provides today. FltMgr's designers had a goal to make sure that everything that FltMgr does can be implemented by a 3rd party filter and so since they couldn't expect 3rd party filters to modify private OS structures they had exposed the same functionality through the FSRTL_PER_FILEOBJECT_CONTEXT structure and related functions (FsRtlInitPerFileObjectContext, FsRtlInsertPerFileObjectContext, FsRtlLookupPerFileObjectContext, FsRtlRemovePerFileObjectContext). Since this is implemented in a different way today it makes sense that this flag is obsolete for now. Please do note, however, that it's entirely possible that it will be reused at some point in the future.
Another thing I wanted to do was to take a closer look at how the FO_DISALLOW_EXCLUSIVE flag can be used, since as I mentioned in my previous post in the series I wasn't sure what it does. Well, after some investigation I have some idea what it does but I'm not sure why exactly this behavior would be desired. So first I'd like to mention that this flag doesn't seem to be used anywhere in the WDK, neither FastFat nor CDFS seem to need it. I couldn't find anything about it online. Naturally I searched for both FO_DISALLOW_EXCLUSIVE and FILE_DISALLOW_EXCLUSIVE but there was really no mention about what they might do or where they might be used. However, there was one bit of information in the WDK that helped a lot: the fact that FO_DISALLOW_EXCLUSIVE is the only flag defined for FO_FLAGS_VALID_ONLY_DURING_CREATE. So I decided to take a very close look at Ntfs' IRP_MJ_CREATE processing in the hope that I might be able to figure out where this flag might be used.
So after some debugging and using my favorite disassembler, IDA, I've been able to find a couple of places where this flag might be checked. In particular the Ntfs!NtfsOpenAttribute function looked very promising since it had code that checked for that exact value, and moreover it was using the same offset into a structure that the FILE_OBJECT->Flags are at:
So I figured I had a pretty good shot at finding out how this is used by looking at when these flags are checked (the path that leads to the checks). That involved a lot of debugging and backtracking, good thing VMWare makes it so easy to retry exactly the same code path over and over again :). Anyway, this is the piece of code that turned out to be relevant:1: kd> dt nt!_FILE_OBJECT +0x000 Type : Int2B +0x002 Size : Int2B ... +0x02c Flags : Uint4B ... +0x07c FileObjectExtension : Ptr32 Void 1: kd> u 960e7c14 L1 Ntfs!NtfsOpenAttribute+0x1f0: 960e7c14 f7402c00000002 test dword ptr [eax+2Ch],2000000h 1: kd> u 960e7ded L1 Ntfs!NtfsOpenAttribute+0x3ca: 960e7ded f7402c00000002 test dword ptr [eax+2Ch],2000000h
What this piece of code checks is that if the file is not writable and this flag is set and the user wants to open the file exclusively (doesn't share READ, WRITE and DELETE; this particular check happens a bit further up in the code, not pictured here…) then the IRP_MJ_CREATE will fail with error 0xC0000022, STATUS_ACCESS_DENIED. I've been able to validate that this is the case using FileTest (during debugging I resorted to nasty tricks to get the thread to take that path I wanted, so I had to validate that this can be done by regular creates too), by creating a file with a Deny Write DACL for EVERYONE (so that Ntfs!NtfsWriteCheck would fail) and then opening it exclusively. It works fine if I don't specify FILE_DISALLOW_EXCLUSIVE but fails with STATUS_ACCESS_DENIED when I add FILE_DISALLOW_EXCLUSIVE to the options.1: kd> u Ntfs!NtfsOpenAttribute+0x3af L0x10 Ntfs!NtfsOpenAttribute+0x3b0: 960e7dd3 7328 jae Ntfs!NtfsOpenAttribute+0x3da (960e7dfd) 960e7dd5 ff7518 push dword ptr [ebp+18h] 960e7dd8 50 push eax 960e7dd9 53 push ebx 960e7dda e8e9d70100 call Ntfs!NtfsWriteCheck (961055c8) 960e7ddf 8845e7 mov byte ptr [ebp-19h],al 960e7de2 c645e601 mov byte ptr [ebp-1Ah],1 960e7de6 84c0 test al,al 960e7de8 7535 jne Ntfs!NtfsOpenAttribute+0x3fc (960e7e1f) 960e7dea 8b4618 mov eax,dword ptr [esi+18h] 960e7ded f7402c00000002 test dword ptr [eax+2Ch],2000000h 960e7df4 7429 je Ntfs!NtfsOpenAttribute+0x3fc (960e7e1f) 960e7df6 a0187c0996 mov al,byte ptr [Ntfs!NtfsStatusDebugEnabled (96097c18)] 960e7dfb 84c0 test al,al 960e7dfd 7414 je Ntfs!NtfsOpenAttribute+0x3f0 (960e7e13) 960e7dff 681f3a0000 push 3A1Fh 1: kd> u 960e7e13 Ntfs!NtfsOpenAttribute+0x3f0: 960e7e13 c745e0220000c0 mov dword ptr [ebp-20h],0C0000022h 960e7e1a e98f040000 jmp Ntfs!NtfsOpenAttribute+0x88a (960e82ae)
As I said before I'm not sure why this is useful, so if you know a scenario where this might be useful please add a comment and enlighten me :). Anyway, this is what I've been to figure out about this flag so I hope it helps...
Thursday, June 28, 2012
The Flags of FILE_OBJECTs - Part IV
This is the last part in the series of posts on the flags of the FILE_OBJECT. The previous posts can be found here:
- The Flags of FILE_OBJECTs - Part I
- The Flags of FILE_OBJECTs - Part II
- The Flags of FILE_OBJECTs - Part III
- FO_FILE_FAST_IO_READ - 0x00080000 - according to the documentation page for the FILE_OBJECT structure, this flag is set to indicate that a fast I/O read was performed on this FILE_OBJECT. However, looking at the FastFat source code reveals more. First, the flag can be set when the file is read through a regular request as well, not only through fast IO (see FatCommonRead and FatMultiAsyncCompletionRoutine). There is also an interesting bit in the create path (FatCommonCreate), where the flag is set if the caller requested EXECUTE access. So it appears that in fact this flag is set when the user performs a read on the file, but not for paging reads (which makes sense, paging reads are, in a way, the system reading from a file and not exactly the user). The reason for this becomes clear when looking at where the flag is used in FastFat: in the FatUpdateDirentFromFcb function, which uses the flag to figure out if it needs to update the last access time on the file.
- FO_RANDOM_ACCESS - 0x00100000 - this flag is set to indicate that the caller intends to use this FILE_OBJECT for random access (forward and backward seeks). It maps to the FILE_RANDOM_ACCESS flag and is set when creating the handle. The flag is pretty similar to the FO_SEQUENTIAL_ONLY but works in the opposite way: it's an indication to the cache manager that it can't assume that once a location in the file was touched once it won't be touched again so it shouldn't be overly aggressive in removing things from the cache. Unlike FO_SEQUENTIAL_ONLY this flag can't be set or queried using the FileModeInformation.
- FO_FILE_OPEN_CANCELLED - 0x00200000 - this flag indicates that the IRP_MJ_CREATE for the FILE_OBJECT was cancelled. In other words, someone called IoCancelFileOpen or FltCancelFileOpen. The flag is set in IoCancelFileOpen and is used in IopParseDevice where the IO manager needs to figure out if it should cleanup the FILE_OBJECT (by issuing an IRP_MJ_CLOSE) or not. The documentation for the FltCancelFileOpen routine is also a pretty good source of information for this flag.
- FO_VOLUME_OPEN - 0x00400000 - this flag indicates that the FILE_OBJECT is an open for a volume. Interestingly enough this flag is set by the IO manager after the IRP_MJ_CREATE IRP completes, so it would not be available in preCreate. However, preCreate is where it's most useful (see the simrep and MetadataManager minifilter samples in the WDK) and so FltMgr parses the IRP_MJ_CREATE parameters and set the FO_VOLUME_OPEN flag when appropriate so that it's available even in preCreate (see this NTFSD post). This means that this flag is usable by minifilters for all operations. For legacy filters things are more complicated (as usual): they might see the flag set if there is a FltMgr frame above them but they might not see it otherwise (so I guess legacy filters shouldn't expect to see this flag set).
- FO_REMOTE_ORIGIN - 0x01000000 - this is a flag that indicates that the FILE_OBJECT was created to satisfy a remote request, which is something done by remote file systems. There are two functions that deal with this flag: IoIsFileOriginRemote which pretty much just queries this flag, and IoSetFileOrigin which sets it. The documentation for both functions mentions this connection (between these functions and FO_REMOTE_ORIGIN) but fails to explain why this is done. The reason is that the cache manager handles files coming from a remote file system differently and so this flag is a hint to the cache manager.
- FO_DISALLOW_EXCLUSIVE - 0x02000000 - this flag is set during the create processing if the FILE_DISALLOW_EXCLUSIVE flag was set on the request. It would appear that this flag can only be set during an IRP_MJ_CREATE operation (there is a definition for FO_FLAGS_VALID_ONLY_DURING_CREATE which is what I'm basing this on). I don't know exactly what this flag does and looking over my notes I've never actually used it or had to interact with it so I guess I'll have to investigate this and write a post on it :).
- FO_SKIP_COMPLETION_PORT - 0x02000000 - this flag is pretty well explained in the FILE_OBJECT structure page. Additionally, the documentation for SetFileCompletionNotificationModes also explains how this flag might be used (this flag maps to the FILE_SKIP_COMPLETION_PORT_ON_SUCCESS flag). There is also this post that explains a bit more about the flags that affect behavior of IO completion (the following flags): Designing Applications for High Performance - Part III. I'm guessing this flag can be set using the FILE_IO_COMPLETION_NOTIFICATION_INFORMATION structure and respective information class.
- FO_SKIP_SET_EVENT - 0x04000000 - this flag is similar to FO_SKIP_COMPLETION_PORT. It maps to the FILE_SKIP_SET_EVENT_ON_HANDLE (as per the page for the SetFileCompletionNotificationModes function).
- FO_SKIP_SET_FAST_IO - 0x08000000 - this flag appears to be similar to the previous ones but doesn’t seem to be something that can be set using SetFileCompletionNotificationModes(). Based on the documentation page for the FILE_OBJECT structure it seems that this flag controls whether the FILE_OBJECT event should be signaled when an operation goes through a fast IO call and therefore completes inline. Naturally in that case there is no need to set the event. Looking at wdm.h it would seem that this flag maps to the FILE_SKIP_SET_USER_EVENT_ON_FAST_IO.
Thursday, June 21, 2012
The Flags of FILE_OBJECTs - Part III
This is the third part in the series about FILE_OBJECT flags. Hopefully the next one will be the last one, I didn't expect this would take this long. Anyway, here is the next set of FILE_OBJECT flags:
- FO_DIRECT_DEVICE_OPEN - 0x00000800 - this flag indicates that this FILE_OBJECT was the result of a "direct device open". I have already explored this topic in my previous post on Opening Volume Handles in Minifilters. This means that the FILE_OBJECT is in fact a handle to the storage stack volume instead of the file system volume. Please note that this flag is not the same as the FO_VOLUME_OPEN flag (and in fact they're incompatible). This flag isn't really used by file systems at all since the target device is not a file system device but rather the actual storage underneath a file system. As such file system filters will also not be involved in processing FILE_OBJECTs that have this flag set.
- FO_FILE_MODIFIED - 0x00001000 - this flag indicates that the FILE_OBJECT was used to modify the file. It is primarily used by the file system (to track handles that didn't modify the file or to figure out when it should flush things). As far as I can tell the IO manager doesn't really use it but it will set it. The FastFat sample in the WDK shows in great detail how FO_FILE_MODIFIED is used.
- FO_FILE_SIZE_CHANGED - 0x00002000 - this flag indicates that the file size was changed using this FILE_OBJECT. This is also primarily used by the file system and the IO manager will only set it. This flag is used in conjunction with FO_FILE_MODIFIED and, like FO_FILE_MODIFIED, the FastFat sample is a great example of a file system uses it.
- FO_CLEANUP_COMPLETE - 0x00004000 - this flag means that the file system has already processed an IRP_MJ_CLEANUP request on this FILE_OBJECT. There are certain restrictions on which operations are allowed on such FILE_OBJECTs, as can be seen in both the CDFS and FastFat samples. Windows actually uses such FILE_OBJECTs (that have been cleaned up) fairly frequently and thus filters might need to pay attention to this flag in order to be able to figure out which operations might be allowed on it.
- FO_TEMPORARY_FILE - 0x00008000 - this flag indicates that the file was opened with the FILE_ATTRIBUTE_TEMPORARY. File systems don't seem to do much beyond setting the flag. The consumer of this information is the Cache Manager, that does more aggressive write caching for temporary files (since it's expected that the file will go away anyway and so there is no point in flushing data to disk; please note that memory pressure might require that data gets flushed, it's just that the caching is more aggressive). See the notes under "Caching Behavior" on the page for the CreateFile function.
- FO_DELETE_ON_CLOSE - 0x00010000 - as noted in my previous post on Using FileModeInformation, I've never seen this flag used anywhere until I looked at the implementation of IopGetModeInformation. So as far as I can tell this flag really isn't used. In the current implementation however it can be read by a query for the FileModeInformation class.
- FO_OPENED_CASE_SENSITIVE - 0x00020000 - this flag indicates whether name operations on the FILE_OBJECT should be performed in a case-sensitive way or not. This is very important for file system filters that deal with the namespace. This applies not only to filters that change the name space (name providers must know whether to process things in a case-sensitive or in a case-insensitive way) but also for filters that just look at file names and don't actually change anything. There is a related flag that is very important, the SL_CASE_SENSITIVE. I've written multiple posts that mention case sensitivity but the more interesting ones are the one on FILE_OBJECT Names in IRP_MJ_CREATE and the one on Names in Minifilters - Implementing Name Provider Callbacks.
- FO_HANDLE_CREATED - 0x00040000 - this flag indicates that a handle has been created for the FILE_OBJECT. From the IO manager's perspective the CREATE operation has completed successfully (so it's too late to call FltCancelFileOpen or IoCancelFileOpen). The flag is set after the successful IRP_MJ_CREATE is completed back to the IO manager, in the IopParseDevice function. The documentation for ObOpenObjectByPointer implies that it's only safe to be called for FILE_OBJECTs that have this flag set. I should have mentioned this in my previous post on Duplicating User Mode Handles, but I can see I've only added an ASSERT but didn't explain it.
Thursday, June 14, 2012
The Flags of FILE_OBJECTs - Part II
In the post last week we discussed some of the various flags of the FILE_OBJECT, but since there are so many of them I left some for this week. So here we go again:
- FO_SEQUENTIAL_ONLY - 0x00000020 - this flag is set to indicate that the caller guarantees that this FILE_OBJECT will only be used for sequential requests (no seeks). It maps to the FILE_SEQUENTIAL_ONLY flag and is usually set when Creating the handle, though it's possible to set and query it through the FileModeInformation information class. This flag is simply an indication to the cache manager that it can be more aggressive about removing things from the file system cache (since the flag implies that once data at a certain offset was touched it will likely not be needed again). If the user sets this flag but doesn't honor the contract (i.e. if IO isn't actually sequential (so it's at random offsets in the file)) then the cache performance will not be optimal. This flag (FILE_SEQUENTIAL_ONLY) is useful when copying a file or scanning a file for hashing and so on. Without the FILE_SEQUENTIAL_ONLY flag the file will be kept in the cache and will compete with everything else in there, so it might evict useful data from the cache (for example you have an application open and you switch to explorer and copy some files around... if the files that are copied are opened with the FILE_SEQUENTIAL_ONLY flag then the cache will likely prioritize existing things in cache over the file contents so when you switch back to your application it will still be in the cache. Without the flag it is more likely that the application will be removed from the cache because of the file copy...).
- FO_CACHE_SUPPORTED - 0x00000040 - according to the MSDN page on the FILE_OBJECT structure this flag should only be set if the file system implements supports for the FSRTL_ADVANCED_FCB_HEADER structure. However, all windows file systems should implement this structure anyway. This flag is set by the filesystem as a means to keep track whether the open for this FILE_OBJECT had the FILE_NO_INTERMEDIATE_BUFFERING set (if FILE_NO_INTERMEDIATE_BUFFERING was set then this must be clear). This flag isn't terribly useful since the flag that controls most of the caching behavior is FO_NO_INTERMEDIATE_BUFFERING. I'm not sure why someone felt there was a need to add this flag when FO_NO_INTERMEDIATE_BUFFERING conveys the same information.
- FO_NAMED_PIPE - 0x00000080 - this flag indicates that the FILE_OBJECT is for a named pipe. This is set by the file system (NPFS in this case) so it's not available in preCreate. According to a post on NTFSD, this flag can also be set for the connection to the IPC$ by the redirector, even though that FILE_OBJECT is not backed by NPFS on the remote server. On the local system everything works pretty much as you expect, with the flag being set for all NPFS FILE_OBJECTs.
- FO_STREAM_FILE - 0x00000100 - this flag is set for FILE_OBJECTs created using the IoCreateStreamFileObject API (or friends: IoCreateStreamFileObjectEx, IoCreateStreamFileObjectEx2 and IoCreateStreamFileObjectLite). I've discussed stream FILE_OBJECTs in my post About IRP_MJ_CREATE and minifilter design considerations - Part V. Please note that this does NOT indicate the FILE_OBJECT is for an alternate data stream (I've seen some people confuse them). The two concepts (stream file objects and alternate data streams) are unrelated.
- FO_MAILSLOT - 0x00000200 - this flag is similar in intent with the FO_NAMED_PIPE flag, except that in this case it indicates that the underlying file system is the mailslots file system (MSFS). According to the OSR thread that I pointed to earlier, apparently for FILE_OBJECTs for remote file systems the redirector doesn't set the FO_MAILSLOT flag even if the remote FILE_OBJECT has it. But anyway for local FILE_OBJECTs this flag should be set just like the FO_NAMED_PIPE flag.
- FO_GENERATE_AUDIT_ON_CLOSE - 0x00000400 - as the MSDN page on the FILE_OBJECT structure points out this flag is deprecated. It has the same value as the next flag, FO_QUEUE_IRP_TO_THREAD.
- FO_QUEUE_IRP_TO_THREAD - 0x00000400 - the only information I've been able to find has also been the MSDN page on the FILE_OBJECT structure. According to that page it means that IRPs will not be queued to this FILE_OBJECT and will be queued to the thread instead (at least that's what I get from the name). This has to do with the thread agnostic IO that was a new feature for Vista. The idea is that instead of queuing IO to a thread there are cases where it can be queued to a FILE_OBJECT (as an optimization). This is described in more detail in a post by PaulSli on Doron's blog, New for Windows Vista: thread agnostic I/O. My guess is that this flag disables that optimization. I've seen this flag set occasionally but I've never had to figure out where it's set and under what circumstances that happens. Still, I hope that this bit of investigation helps.
Thursday, June 7, 2012
The Flags of FILE_OBJECTs - Part I
In this set of posts I'd like to discuss the various flags defined for FILE_OBJECTs and how they are used in the system. The reason I'm doing this is because for most of them the documentation is scarce or wrong and I've been meaning to document them for a while. Please note that most of this information is based on my experience with them and is not meant to be an exhaustive list of how they might be used.
The only documentation I've found on MSDN is on the page about the FILE_OBJECT structure, but as I said before it's very scarce on the details. So without further delay let's start with the flags:
- FO_FILE_OPEN - 0x00000001 - this flag is documented as being deprecated. The sample file systems (FastFat, CDFS) don't even mention it anywhere. I've also been unable to find it set anywhere (I expected either the file system to set it or the IO manager to set it but as far as I can tell it's not really used at all).
- FO_SYNCHRONOUS_IO - 0x00000002 - this is a pretty complicated flag (in that it controls different types of behavior) . It can only be set during the create operation (before the FILE_OBJECT is sent through the IO stack) if the caller uses the FILE_SYNCHRONOUS_IO_ALERT or FILE_SYNCHRONOUS_IO_NONALERT options. If none of these is set then the FILE_OBJECT won't have the flag set. This flag controls a couple of different behaviors:
- if the flag is set then the FILE_OBJECT->CurrentByteOffset field is updated after each IO operation to reflect the current file position pointer and also it enables using the FILE_OBJECT->CurrentByteOffset as the current file offset to perform IO at (FILE_USE_FILE_POINTER_POSITION can only be used for a file that has FO_SYNCHRONOUS_IO set). So in a way this flag controls whether the current position can be used for this FILE_OBJECT.
- if the flag is set then the IO manager will try to synchronize operations using that FILE_OBJECT. So if multiple threads use the same FILE_OBJECT then the IO manager will only allow one operation at a time to proceed. Please note that this doesn't mean that file system filter will only see one operation at a time since it's possible that other components on the system issue IO directly on the FILE_OBJECT without synchronizing with the IO manager (pretty typical with the Cache Manager).
- If the flag is set then IoIsOperationSynchronous (and its friend FltIsOperationSynchronous) will return TRUE (as long as this isn't an asynchronous paging IO request, in which case it doesn't matter whether FO_SYNCHRONOUS_IO is set). The return value of IoIsOperationSynchronous and FltIsOperationSynchronous might have deeper impact on how the request is processed by the file system or file system filters (which might decide to process it inline rather than queue it if it's synchronous).
- FO_ALERTABLE_IO - 0x00000004 - as the FILE_OBJECT structure documentation page mentions, this flag controls how the IO manager waits when using the FILE_OBJECT. If the flag is set then most waits (which can be waits to acquire the FILE_OBJECT to synchronize IO on it or just waiting for IO to complete) are alertable. The flag will be set depending on the presence of FILE_SYNCHRONOUS_IO_ALERT or FILE_SYNCHRONOUS_IO_NONALERT. The flag is only meaningful for FILE_OBJECTs for which FO_SYNCHRONOUS_IO is set and can be set and cleared in the Create path and using the FileModeInformation information class. Please note that setting or clearing it using FileModeInformation only works if the FILE_OBJECT has the FO_SYNCHRONOUS_IO set. Another thing to note is that file systems seem to ignore this flag.
- FO_NO_INTERMEDIATE_BUFFERING - 0x00000008 - this flag indicates whether the file was opened for non-cached IO. It maps to the FILE_NO_INTERMEDIATE_BUFFERING flag and can only be set during Create. It controls two different behaviors as well:
- If it is set then there is no file system caching for this FILE_OBJECT. The implications here are pretty heavy. A lot of the cache management specific operations and flags are disabled (I'll discuss this more further down when I talk about some of the other flags). Also the file system code paths are quite different when dealing with cached IO and non-cached IO. This also means that for IO happening on this FILE_OBJECT the file system might need to perform flushes to keep the cached and non-cached views of the data coherent.
- Another implication of this flag being set is that IO must be aligned to the sector size of the underlying device. This impacts reads and writes as well as setting the current file pointer for example. Unaligned operations on this FILE_OBJECT will generally fail at the IO manager level with STATUS_INVALID_PARAMETER.
- FO_WRITE_THROUGH - 0x00000010 - this flag indicates that any data written on this FILE_OBJECT should be flushed immediately to disk. It maps to the FILE_WRITE_THROUGH flag. It can be set in the Create file path and also at any time with the FileModeInformation information class. This flag cannot be set when FO_NO_INTERMEDIATE_BUFFERING is set (it makes no sense if there is no cache at all). Please note that this flag doesn't require that operations be aligned to the underlying sector size, since caching is still in effect, it's just that writes are immediately flushed to disk.
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