Hi Amir, How about this as a set of patches to do what you suggest[1] and hoist the handler functions for I_OVL_INUSE into common code and rename the flag to I_EXCL_INUSE. This can then be shared with cachefiles - allowing me to get rid of S_KERNEL_FILE. I did split out the functionality for preventing file/dir removal to a separate flag, I_NO_REMOVE, so that it's not tied to I_EXCL_INUSE in case overlayfs doesn't want to use it. The downside to that, though is that it requires a separate locking of i_lock to set/clear it. I also added four general tracepoints to log successful lock/unlock, failure to lock and a bad unlock. The lock tracepoints log which driver asked for the lock and all tracepoints allow the driver to log an arbitrary reference number (in cachefiles's case this is the object debug ID). Questions: (1) Should it be using a flag in i_state or a flag in i_flags? I'm not sure what the difference is really. (2) Do we really need to take i_lock when testing I_EXCL_INUSE? Would READ_ONCE() suffice? The patches are on a branch here: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/dhowells/linux-fs.git/log/?h=fscache-fixes David Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/CAOQ4uxhRS3MGEnCUDcsB1RL0d1Oy0g0Rzm75hVFAJw2dJ7uKSA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx/ [1] --- David Howells (5): vfs, overlayfs, cachefiles: Turn I_OVL_INUSE into something generic vfs: Add tracepoints for inode_excl_inuse_trylock/unlock cachefiles: Split removal-prevention from S_KERNEL_FILE and extend effects cachefiles: Use I_EXCL_INUSE instead of S_KERNEL_FILE cachefiles: Remove the now-unused mark-inode-in-use tracepoints fs/cachefiles/namei.c | 54 +++++++++++++------------- fs/inode.c | 56 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++ fs/namei.c | 8 ++-- fs/overlayfs/overlayfs.h | 3 -- fs/overlayfs/super.c | 14 ++++--- fs/overlayfs/util.c | 43 --------------------- include/linux/fs.h | 33 ++++++++++++++-- include/trace/events/cachefiles.h | 63 ------------------------------- 8 files changed, 126 insertions(+), 148 deletions(-)