Re: [PATCH 0/3] namei: fix use-after-free and adjust calling conventions

[Stephen Brennan]

Al Viro <viro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> [snip]
> Another part I really dislike in that area (not your fault, obviously)
> is
>
> void putname(struct filename *name)
> {
>         if (IS_ERR_OR_NULL(name))
> 		return;
>
> in mainline right now.  Could somebody explain when the hell has NULL
> become a possibility here?  OK, I buy putname(ERR_PTR(...)) being
> a no-op, but IME every sodding time we mixed NULL and ERR_PTR() in
> an API we ended up with headache later.
>
> 	IS_ERR_OR_NULL() is almost always wrong.  NULL as argument
> for destructor makes sense when constructor can fail with NULL;
> not the case here.
>
> 	How about the variant in vfs.git#misc.namei?

I went and looked through the changelog of fs/namei.c since this was
changed and don't see anything setting a filename NULL, so it seems safe
and good to me. I couldn't check *every* user of filename but the change
was only two months ago. Feel free to use my r-b for that commit if you
want.

Reviewed-by: Stephen Brennan <stephen.s.brennan@xxxxxxxxxx>