d_splice_alias() problem.

Nikita Danilov
2004-04-23T13:02:53Z

Hello,

for some time I am observing that during stress tests over NFS

shrink_slab->...->prune_dcache()->prune_one_dentry()->...->iput()

is called on inode with ->i_nlink == 0 which results in truncate and
file deletion. This is wrong in general (file system is re-entered), and
deadlock prone on some file systems.

After some debugging, I tracked problem down the to d_splice_alias()
failing to identify dentries when necessary.

Suppose we have an inode with ->i_nlink == 1. It's accessed over NFS and
DCACHE_DISCONNECTED dentry D1 is created for it. Then, unlink request
comes for this file. nfsd looks name up in the parent directory
(nfsd_unlink()->lookup_one_len()). File system back-end uses
d_splice_alias(), but it only works for directories and we end up with
second (this time connected) dentry D2.

D2 is successfully unlinked, file has ->i_nlink == 0, and ->i_count == 1
from D1, and when prune_dcache() hits D1 bad things happen.

It's hard to imagine how new name can be identified with one among
multiple anonymous dentries, which is necessary for
NFSEXP_NOSUBTREECHECK export to work reliably.

One possible work-around is to forcibly destroy all remaining
DCACHE_DISCONNECTED dentries when ->i_nlink drops to zero, but I am not
sure that this is possible and solves all problems of having more
dentries than there are nlinks.

Nikita.