Re: [PATCH v2] fs/hfs: fix s_fs_info leak on setup_bdev_super() failure

Christian Brauner
2025-11-19T14:14:49Z

On Wed, Nov 19, 2025 at 08:38:20AM +0100, Mehdi Ben Hadj Khelifa wrote:
> The regression introduced by commit aca740cecbe5 ("fs: open block device
> after superblock creation") allows setup_bdev_super() to fail after a new
> superblock has been allocated by sget_fc(), but before hfs_fill_super()
> takes ownership of the filesystem-specific s_fs_info data.
>
> In that case, hfs_put_super() and the failure paths of hfs_fill_super()
> are never reached, leaving the HFS mdb structures attached to s->s_fs_info
> unreleased.The default kill_block_super() teardown also does not free
> HFS-specific resources, resulting in a memory leak on early mount failure.
>
> Fix this by moving all HFS-specific teardown (hfs_mdb_put()) from
> hfs_put_super() and the hfs_fill_super() failure path into a dedicated
> hfs_kill_sb() implementation. This ensures that both normal unmount and
> early teardown paths (including setup_bdev_super() failure) correctly
> release HFS metadata.
>
> This also preserves the intended layering: generic_shutdown_super()
> handles VFS-side cleanup, while HFS filesystem state is fully destroyed
> afterwards.
>
> Fixes: aca740cecbe5 ("fs: open block device after superblock creation")

I don't think that's correct.

The bug was introduced when hfs was converted to the new mount api as
this was the point where sb->s_fs_info allocation was moved from
fill_super() to init_fs_context() in ffcd06b6d13b ("hfs: convert hfs to
use the new mount api") which was way after that commit.

I also think this isn't the best way to do it. There's no need to
open-code kill_block_super() at all.

That whole hfs_mdb_get() calling hfs_mdb_put() is completely backwards
and the cleanup labels make no sense - predated anything you did ofc. It
should not call hfs_mdb_put(). It's only caller is fill_super() which
already cleans everything up. So really hfs_kill_super() should just
free the allocation and it should be moved out of hfs_mdb_put().

And that solution is already something I mentioned in my earlier review.
Let me test a patch.