fileio: lower maximum virtual file buffer size by one byte
When reading virtual files (i.e. procfs, sysfs, …) we currently put a
limit of 4M-1 on that. We have to pick something, and we have to read
these files in a single read() (since the kernel generally doesn't
support continuation read()s for them). 4M-1 is actually the maximum
size the kernel allows for reads from files in /proc/sys/, all larger
reads will result in an ENOMEM error (which is really weird, but the
kernel does what the kernel does). Hence 4M-1 sounds like a smart
choice.
However, we made one mistake here: in order to be able to detect EOFs
properly we actually read one byte more than we actually intend to
return: if that extra byte can be read, then we know the file is
actually larger than our limit and we can generate an EFBIG error from
that. However, if it cannot be read then we know EOF was hit, and we are
good. So ultimately after all we issued a single 4M read, which the
kernel then responds with ENOMEM to. And that means read_virtual_file()
actually doesn't work properly right now on /proc/sys/. Let's fix that.
The fix is simple, lower the limit of the the buffer we intend to return
by one, i.e. 4M-2. That way, the read() we'll issue is exactly as large
as the limit the kernel allows, and we still get safely detect EOF from
it.
(cherry picked from commit
7ab7547a40d456d34120b2f44b26385ac1338ebd)