On Sun, Jul 07, 2019 at 02:17:38PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote: > On Fri, Jul 5, 2019 at 5:22 PM Al Viro <viro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > > +static HLIST_HEAD(unmounted); /* protected by namespace_sem */ > > +static LIST_HEAD(ex_mountpoints); > > What protects the ex_mountpoints list? > > It looks like it's the mount_lock, but why isn't that documented? > > It sure isn't namespace_sem from the comment above. It is namespace_sem. Of all put_mountpoint() callers only the one from mntput_no_expire() (disposing of stuck MNT_LOCKed children) is not under namespace_sem; all such are told to use ex_mountpoints for disposal. See + if (!list) + list = &ex_mountpoints; + dput_to_list(dentry, list); in there. Only one call site gets non-default disposal list - list_for_each_entry_safe(p, tmp, &mnt->mnt_mounts, mnt_child) { - umount_mnt(p); + umount_mnt(p, &list); } in mntput_no_expire() passes a local list to umount_mnt() (which passes it to put_mountpoint()). And namespace_unlock() empties ex_mountpoints before dropping namespace_sem - the contents gets moved to a local list, which is fed to shrink_dentry_list() as soon as we drop namespace_sem. Protection of the disposal list is up to the callers of put_mountpoint(); for ex_mountpoints it's namespace_sem, for the one in mntput_no_expire() we don't need any exclusion whatsoever - no other thread can access it. IOW, the comment re namespace_sem applies to ex_mountpoints as well.