Eric Biggers <ebiggers@xxxxxxxxxx> writes: > On Wed, Jul 19, 2023 at 11:06:57PM -0700, Eric Biggers wrote: >> >> I'm also having trouble understanding exactly when ->d_name is stable here. >> AFAICS, unfortunately the VFS has an edge case where a dentry can be moved >> without its parent's ->i_rwsem being held. It happens when a subdirectory is >> "found" under multiple names. The VFS doesn't support directory hard links, so >> if it finds a second link to a directory, it just moves the whole dentry tree to >> the new location. This can happen if a filesystem image is corrupted and >> contains directory hard links. Coincidentally, it can also happen in an >> encrypted directory due to the no-key name => normal name transition... > > Sorry, I think I got this slightly wrong. The move does happen with the > parent's ->i_rwsem held, but it's for read, not for write. First, before > ->lookup is called, the ->i_rwsem of the parent directory is taken for read. > ->lookup() calls d_splice_alias() which can call __d_unalias() which does the > __d_move(). If the old alias is in a different directory (which cannot happen > in that fscrypt case, but can happen in the general "directory hard links" > case), __d_unalias() takes that directory's ->i_rwsem for read too. > > So it looks like the parent's ->i_rwsem does indeed exclude moves of child > dentries, but only if it's taken for *write*. So I guess you can rely on that; > it's just a bit more subtle than it first appears. Though, some of your > explanation seems to assume that a read lock is sufficient ("In __lookup_slow, > either the parent inode is locked by the caller (lookup_slow) ..."), so maybe > there is still a problem. I think I'm missing something on your clarification. I see your point about __d_unalias, and I see in the case where alias->d_parent != dentry->d_parent we acquire the parent inode read lock: static int __d_unalias(struct inode *inode, struct dentry *dentry, struct dentry *alias) { ... m1 = &dentry->d_sb->s_vfs_rename_mutex; if (!inode_trylock_shared(alias->d_parent->d_inode)) goto out_err; } And it seems to use that for __d_move. In this case, __d_move changes from under us even with a read lock, which is dangerous. I think I agree with your first email more than the clarification. In the lookup_slow then: lookup_slow() d_lookup() d_splice_alias() __d_unalias() __d_move() this __d_move Can do a dentry move and race with d_revalidate even though it has the parent read lock. > So it looks like the parent's ->i_rwsem does indeed exclude moves of child > dentries, but only if it's taken for *write*. So I guess you can rely on that; We can get away of it with acquiring the d_lock as you suggested, I think. But can you clarify the above? I wanna make sure I didn't miss anything. I am indeed relying only on the read lock here, as you can see. -- Gabriel Krisman Bertazi