Re: [PATCH 0/3} Change ->mkdir() and vfs_mkdir() to return a dentry

Al Viro
2025-02-14T06:00:40Z

On Fri, Feb 14, 2025 at 04:16:40PM +1100, NeilBrown wrote:
> This is a small set of patches which are needed before we can make the
> locking on directory operations more fine grained. I think they are
> useful even if we don't go that direction.
>
> Some callers of vfs_mkdir() need to operation on the resulting directory
> but cannot be guaranteed that the dentry will be hashed and positive on
> success - another dentry might have been used.
>
> This patch changes ->mkdir to return a dentry, changes NFS in particular
> to return the correct dentry (I believe it is the only filesystem to
> possibly not use the given dentry), and changes vfs_mkdir() to return
> that dentry, removing the look that a few callers currently need.
>
> I have not Cc: the developers of all the individual filesystems - only
> NFS. I have build-tested all the changes except hostfs. I can email
> them explicitly if/when this is otherwise acceptable. If anyone sees
> this on fs-devel and wants to provide a pre-emptive ack I will collect
> those and avoid further posting for those fs.

1) please, don't sprinkle the PTR_ERR_OR_ZERO() shite all over the place.
Almost always the same thing can be done without it and it ends up
being cleaner. Seriously.

2) I suspect that having method instances return NULL for "just use the
argument" would would be harder to fuck up; basically, the same as for
->lookup() instances. I'll try to tweak it and see what falls out...

3) I'm pretty sure that NFS is *not* the only filesystem that returns
unhashed negative in some success cases; will need to go over the instances
to verify that, though.