From: Maneesh Soni o The following patch fixes is_subdir() races with d_move. Due to concurrent d_move, in is_subdir() we can end up accessing freed d_parent pointer in case of pre-emptible kernel. To avoid this we can use rcu_read_lock() and rcu_read_unlock(). o This also fixes the seqlock uses in is_subdir() as we need to restart the the inner loop with the origianl new_dentry passed to the routine in case of any rename occured while we are traversing d_parent links. --- fs/dcache.c | 9 +++++++++ 1 files changed, 9 insertions(+) diff -puN fs/dcache.c~is_subdir-locking-fix fs/dcache.c --- 25/fs/dcache.c~is_subdir-locking-fix 2004-01-27 23:45:49.000000000 -0800 +++ 25-akpm/fs/dcache.c 2004-01-27 23:45:49.000000000 -0800 @@ -1434,15 +1434,23 @@ out: * * Returns 1 if new_dentry is a subdirectory of the parent (at any depth). * Returns 0 otherwise. + * Caller must ensure that "new_dentry" is pinned before calling is_subdir() */ int is_subdir(struct dentry * new_dentry, struct dentry * old_dentry) { int result; + struct dentry * saved = new_dentry; unsigned long seq; result = 0; + /* need rcu_readlock to protect against the d_parent trashing due to + * d_move + */ + rcu_read_lock(); do { + /* for restarting inner loop in case of seq retry */ + new_dentry = saved; seq = read_seqbegin(&rename_lock); for (;;) { if (new_dentry != old_dentry) { @@ -1456,6 +1464,7 @@ int is_subdir(struct dentry * new_dentry break; } } while (read_seqretry(&rename_lock, seq)); + rcu_read_unlock(); return result; } _