Re: [PATCH] ovl: clean up dir on casefold mismatch

From: Tao Cui

Date: Mon Sep 07 2026 - 01:38:17 EST




在 2026/9/7 12:55, Tao Cui 写道:
> From: Tao Cui <cuitao@xxxxxxxxxx>
>
> In ovl_create_real(), the S_IFDIR case checks after a successful
> ovl_do_mkdir() that the new directory inherited the expected casefold
> flag. On mismatch, err is set to -EINVAL but the directory that was
> just created in the workdir or in the upper layer is left behind.
>
> The mismatch is reachable: ofs->casefold is fixed at mount time, but
> the casefold flag of the index dir can diverge. With index=on, a
> pre-existing "index" directory with +F is accepted at mount, and every
> temp mkdir for an index entry inside it fails the check and leaks one
> directory. Measured on an ext4 casefold upper: 100 directory renames
> left 100 "#nnnn" entries in the index dir, one per failed mkdir,
> growing without bound.
>
> Clean up the created directory with ovl_cleanup_locked() before
> returning the error. All callers of ovl_create_real() arrive with the
> parent inode locked (via start_creating()), so the locked variant must
> be used; ovl_cleanup() would deadlock on inode_lock().
>
> Fixes: dfc7da402ccc9 ("ovl: Check for casefold consistency when creating new dentries")
> Cc: stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Signed-off-by: Tao Cui <cuitao@xxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
> fs/overlayfs/dir.c | 1 +
> 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)
>
> diff --git a/fs/overlayfs/dir.c b/fs/overlayfs/dir.c
> index 7beb0af26498..4e451bbd8f97 100644
> --- a/fs/overlayfs/dir.c
> +++ b/fs/overlayfs/dir.c
> @@ -188,6 +188,7 @@ struct dentry *ovl_create_real(struct ovl_fs *ofs, struct dentry *parent,
> if (!err && ofs->casefold != ovl_dentry_casefolded(newdentry)) {
> pr_warn_ratelimited("wrong inherited casefold (%pd2)\n",
> newdentry);
> + ovl_cleanup_locked(ofs, dir, newdentry);
> err = -EINVAL;
> }
> break;

Sashiko pointed out that the casefold check can crash on a negative
dentry (https://sashiko.dev/#/patchset/20260907045517.1347518-1-cui.tao%40linux.dev):

ovl_dentry_casefolded() evaluates IS_CASEFOLDED(d_inode()), which is a
plain dereference, so a negative dentry would crash before we even get
to the WARN_ON(!newdentry->d_inode) check below. And if it somehow
survived that, ovl_cleanup_locked() would rmdir a negative dentry.

The NULL deref itself is pre-existing (dfc7da402ccc9), but the cleanup
call makes it worse, so I'll fix the ordering in v2:

+ if (!err && d_is_positive(newdentry) &&
+ ofs->casefold != ovl_dentry_casefolded(newdentry)) {

Negative dentries stay on the existing WARN_ON path.