From: Bryan Donlan <bdonlan@xxxxxxxxx> ext3_iget() returns -ESTALE if invoked on a deleted inode, in order to report errors to NFS properly. However, in ext[234]_lookup(), this -ESTALE can be propagated to userspace if the filesystem is corrupted such that a directory entry references a deleted inode. This leads to a misleading error message - "Stale NFS file handle" - and confusion on the part of the admin. The bug can be easily reproduced by creating a new filesystem, making a link to an unused inode using debugfs, then mounting and attempting to ls -l said link. This patch thus changes ext3_lookup to return -EIO if it receives -ESTALE from ext3_iget(), as ext3 does for other filesystem metadata corruption; and also invokes the appropriate ext*_error functions when this case is detected. Signed-off-by: Bryan Donlan <bdonlan@xxxxxxxxx> Cc: <linux-ext4@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- fs/ext3/namei.c | 12 ++++++++++-- 1 file changed, 10 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff -puN fs/ext3/namei.c~ext3-return-eio-not-estale-on-directory-traversal-through-deleted-inode fs/ext3/namei.c --- a/fs/ext3/namei.c~ext3-return-eio-not-estale-on-directory-traversal-through-deleted-inode +++ a/fs/ext3/namei.c @@ -1047,8 +1047,16 @@ static struct dentry *ext3_lookup(struct return ERR_PTR(-EIO); } inode = ext3_iget(dir->i_sb, ino); - if (IS_ERR(inode)) - return ERR_CAST(inode); + if (unlikely(IS_ERR(inode))) { + if (PTR_ERR(inode) == -ESTALE) { + ext3_error(dir->i_sb, __func__, + "deleted inode referenced: %lu", + ino); + return ERR_PTR(-EIO); + } else { + return ERR_CAST(inode); + } + } } return d_splice_alias(inode, dentry); } _ -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-ext4" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html