The test case below fails on 5.17 (and a bunch of older kernels) with unshare getting -ENOSPC, because the rate at which ipc_namespace structures can be freed is limited by each item on the to-free list waiting in synchronize_rcu. Making kern_unmount use queue_rcu_work gets rid of that slowdown, allowing a batch of vfsmount structures to be freed after each RCU grace period has expired. That, in turn, allows us to just get rid of the workqueue in ipc/namespace.c completely. With these two changes the test case reliably succeeds at calling unshare a million times, even with max_ipc_namespaces reduced to 1000 :) #define _GNU_SOURCE #include <sched.h> #include <error.h> #include <errno.h> #include <stdlib.h> int main() { int i; for (i = 0; i < 1000000; i++) { if (unshare(CLONE_NEWIPC) < 0) error(EXIT_FAILURE, errno, "unshare"); } } Rik van Riel (2): vfs: free vfsmount through rcu work from kern_unmount ipc: get rid of free_ipc_work workqueue fs/namespace.c | 11 +++++++++-- include/linux/ipc_namespace.h | 2 -- include/linux/mount.h | 2 ++ ipc/namespace.c | 21 +-------------------- 4 files changed, 12 insertions(+), 24 deletions(-) -- 2.34.1