Re: [PATCH] fs: load FS modules before pinning the mountpoint

Al Viro
2014-11-13T14:43:07Z

On Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 03:14:33PM +0100, David Herrmann wrote:
> Several pseudo file-systems create default mountpoints in /sys/fs/ or
> /sys/kernel/, including:
> /sys/kernel/debug
> /sys/fs/mqueue
> /sys/fs/cgroup
> /sys/fs/pstore
>
> If the given pseudo file-system is available as a module, user-space can
> rely on mount(2) to load the module on-demand (assuming MODULE_ALIAS_FS).
> However, in case the default mount-point is created by the file-system
> itself, mount(2) will fail as it cannot pin the mountpoint.
>
> This patch makes mount(2) load any requested file-systems before pinning
> the target mount-point. This way, a file-system module can create default
> mount-points in the module instead of creating them statically in the
> core kernel.

I'm not taking that until I see a module that would attempt to do such
mountpoint creation *and* managed to get it race-free.

Besides, I really don't like the way you do this lookup only to never use
the result other than for pinning the damn module. But that's secondary -
the main issue is with the amount of fun races in the whole "let module
create that default mountpoint" approach.