Re: [PATCH 2/2] kernfs: dont take i_lock on revalidate

From: Miklos Szeredi
Date: Mon Oct 24 2022 - 04:38:26 EST


On Tue, 18 Oct 2022 at 04:32, Ian Kent <raven@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> In kernfs_dop_revalidate() when the passed in dentry is negative the
> dentry directory is checked to see if it has changed and if so the
> negative dentry is discarded so it can refreshed. During this check
> the dentry inode i_lock is taken to mitigate against a possible
> concurrent rename.
>
> But if it's racing with a rename, becuase the dentry is negative, it
> can't be the source it must be the target and it must be going to do
> a d_move() otherwise the rename will return an error.
>
> In this case the parent dentry of the target will not change, it will
> be the same over the d_move(), only the source dentry parent may change
> so the inode i_lock isn't needed.
>
> Signed-off-by: Ian Kent <raven@xxxxxxxxxx>

Reviewed-by: Miklos Szeredi <mszeredi@xxxxxxxxxx>