Re: [PATCH] reiserfs: Expand i_mutex to enclose lookup_one_len

Al Viro
2009-05-03T08:52:49Z

On Fri, May 01, 2009 at 12:11:12PM -0400, Jeff Mahoney wrote:
> 2.6.30-rc3 introduced some sanity checks in the VFS code to avoid NFS
> bugs by ensuring that lookup_one_len is always called under i_mutex.
>
> This patch expands the i_mutex locking to enclose lookup_one_len. This was
> always required, but not not enforced in the reiserfs code since it
> does locking around the xattr interactions with the xattr_sem.
>
> This is obvious enough, but it survived an overnight 50 thread ACL test.

It's not enough, unfortunately ;-/ It deals with the warning, but it
leaves an actual hole in there.

Look: what happens if we mount it r/o without that directory and then
remount r/w? We get dentry for privroot, hash it (negative at that point),
then do actual mkdir, unlock root and modify the ->d_compare() of root
to reject lookups on that sucker. Too late - in the meanwhile lookups
might very well come and find privroot in dcache.

BTW, the way ->d_compare() is done in there is rather dumb -
if (q1 == &priv_root->d_name)
return -ENOENT;
...
would do just as well. Why don't we do that lookup *once* (on ->get_sb(),
before anything can come and race with us), and then just keep negative
dentry if the directory hadn't been around? And set d_compare() for root
immediately after that lookup...

I've applied your patch as-is, and unless you have objections to the
variant above I'll do that as incremental. Comments?