Al Viro <viro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hmm... Why do these stores to ->i_state need WRITE_ONCE, while an arseload > of similar in fs/fs-writeback.c does not? Because what matters in find_inode_rcu() are the I_WILL_FREE and I_FREEING flags - and there's a gap during iput_final() where neither is set. if (!drop) { inode->i_state |= I_WILL_FREE; spin_unlock(&inode->i_lock); write_inode_now(inode, 1); spin_lock(&inode->i_lock); WARN_ON(inode->i_state & I_NEW); inode->i_state &= ~I_WILL_FREE; ---> } inode->i_state |= I_FREEING; It's normally covered by i_lock, but it's a problem if anyone looks at the pair without taking i_lock. Even flipping the order: if (!drop) { inode->i_state |= I_WILL_FREE; spin_unlock(&inode->i_lock); write_inode_now(inode, 1); spin_lock(&inode->i_lock); WARN_ON(inode->i_state & I_NEW); inode->i_state |= I_FREEING; inode->i_state &= ~I_WILL_FREE; } else { inode->i_state |= I_FREEING; } isn't a guarantee of the order in which the compiler will do things AIUI. Maybe I've been listening to Paul McKenney too much. So the WRITE_ONCE() should guarantee that both bits will change atomically. Note that ocfs2_drop_inode() looks a tad suspicious: int ocfs2_drop_inode(struct inode *inode) { struct ocfs2_inode_info *oi = OCFS2_I(inode); trace_ocfs2_drop_inode((unsigned long long)oi->ip_blkno, inode->i_nlink, oi->ip_flags); assert_spin_locked(&inode->i_lock); inode->i_state |= I_WILL_FREE; spin_unlock(&inode->i_lock); write_inode_now(inode, 1); spin_lock(&inode->i_lock); WARN_ON(inode->i_state & I_NEW); inode->i_state &= ~I_WILL_FREE; return 1; } David