Found while trying to untangle some... unidiomatic string handling in cifs: static struct cache_entry *__lookup_cache_entry(const char *path) { struct cache_entry *ce; unsigned int h; bool found = false; h = cache_entry_hash(path, strlen(path)); hlist_for_each_entry(ce, &cache_htable[h], hlist) { if (!strcasecmp(path, ce->path)) { found = true; dump_ce(ce); break; } } if (!found) ce = ERR_PTR(-ENOENT); return ce; } combined with static inline unsigned int cache_entry_hash(const void *data, int size) { unsigned int h; h = jhash(data, size, 0); return h & (CACHE_HTABLE_SIZE - 1); } That can't possibly work. The fundamental requirement for hashes is that lookups for all keys matching an entry *MUST* lead to searches in the same hash chain. Here the test is strcasecmp(), so "foo" and "Foo" are expected to match the same entry. But jhash() yields different values on those - it's a general-purpose hash, and it doesn't give a damn about upper and lower case letters. Moreover, even though we look at the value modulo 32, I don't believe that it's going to be case-insensitive. Either the key comparison or the hash function is wrong here. *IF* something external guarantees the full match, we don't need strcasecmp() - strcmp() would work. Otherwise, the hash function needs to be changed.