Re: [RFC PATCH 1/3] debugfs: fix automount inode i_nlink references

Greg Kroah-Hartman
2016-02-08T16:35:30Z

On Mon, Feb 08, 2016 at 11:28:52AM +0100, Roman Peniaev wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 8, 2016 at 7:38 AM, Greg Kroah-Hartman
> <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> > On Thu, Dec 10, 2015 at 01:47:12PM +0100, Roman Pen wrote:
> >> Directory inodes should start off with i_nlink == 2 (for "." entry).
> >> Of course the same rule should be applied to automount dentries for
> >> child and parent inodes as well.
> >>
> >> Also now automount dentry does fsnotify_mkdir.
> >>
> >> Without this patch kernel complains when sees i_nlink == 0:
> >
> > How can the kernel see this? What did you do to trigger this?
>
> Yes, sorry, I had to be more precise on this.
> That happens on unlinking of automount dentry.
>
> Easily can be reproduced:
>
> autom = debugfs_create_automount("automount", parentd, vfsmount_cb, data);
> BUG_ON(IS_ERR_OR_NULL(autom));
> debugfs_remove(autom);
>
> You will immediately see one warning on attempt to drop_nlink() (which is zero)
> for automount dentry.

Why don't we see this "in the wild" today with the one user of this
function?

> The second warning happens when you unlink 'parentd', because
> debugfs_create_automount() did not increase the nlink for parent
> inode.
>
> Do I need to resend this patch with more precise description?

Yes, please fix up and resend as a stand-alone patch, as it is
independant of your other proposal.

And take off the "RFC" marking, I can never apply a patch with that type
of marking as you obviously don't think it is good enough to be merged,
so why would I? :)

thanks,

greg k-h