Re: [PATCH v3 0/7] assorted ->i_count changes + extension of lockless handling

[Christian Brauner]

On Sun, Mar 29, 2026 at 07:19:55PM +0200, Mateusz Guzik wrote:
> The stock kernel support partial lockless in handling in that iput() can
> decrement any value > 1. Any ref acquire however requires the spinlock.
> 
> With this patchset ref acquires when the value was already at least 1
> also become lockless. That is, only transitions 0->1 and 1->0 take the
> lock.
> 
> I verified when nfs calls into the hash taking the lock is typically
> avoided. Similarly, btrfs likes to igrab() and avoids the lock.
> However, I have to fully admit I did not perform any benchmarks. While
> cleaning stuff up I noticed lockless operation is almost readily
> available so I went for it.
> 
> Clean-up wise, the icount_read_once() stuff lines up with inode_state_read_once().
> The prefix is different but I opted to not change it due to igrab(), ihold() et al.
> 
> There is a future-proofing change in iput_final(). I am not going to
> strongly insist on it, but at the very least the problem needs to be
> noted in a comment.

Seems overall good to me aside from the bdev_file_open_by_dev() splat
ofc.