After having looked at the problem, how about the following series: 1/5) lift path_get() *AND* path_put() out of do_dentry_open() into the callers. The latter - conditional upon "do_dentry_open() has not set FMODE_OPENED". Equivalent transformation. 2/5) move path_get() we'd lifted into the callers past the call of do_dentry_open(), conditionally collapse it with path_put(). You'd get e.g. int vfs_open(const struct path *path, struct file *file) { int ret; file->f_path = *path; ret = do_dentry_open(file, NULL); if (!ret) { /* * Once we return a file with FMODE_OPENED, __fput() will call * fsnotify_close(), so we need fsnotify_open() here for * symmetry. */ fsnotify_open(file); } if (file->f_mode & FMODE_OPENED) path_get(path); return ret; } Equivalent transformation, provided that nobody is playing silly buggers with reassigning ->f_path in their ->open() instances. They *really* should not - if anyone does, we'd better catch them and fix them^Wtheir code. Incidentally, if we find any such, we have a damn good reason to add asserts in the callers. As in, "if do_dentry_open() has set FMODE_OPENED, it would bloody better *not* modify ->f_path". <greps> Nope, nobody is that insane. 3/5) split vfs_open_consume() out of vfs_open() (possibly named vfs_open_borrow()), replace the call in do_open() with calling the new function. Trivially equivalent transformation. 4/5) Remove conditional path_get() from vfs_open_consume() and finish_open(). Add if (file->f_mode & FMODE_OPENED) path_get(&nd->path); before terminate_walk(nd); in path_openat(). Equivalent transformation - see if (file->f_mode & (FMODE_OPENED | FMODE_CREATED)) { dput(nd->path.dentry); nd->path.dentry = dentry; return NULL; } in lookup_open() (which is where nd->path gets in sync with what had been given to do_dentry_open() in finish_open()); in case of vfs_open_consume() in do_open() it's in sync from the very beginning. And we never modify nd->path after those points. So we can move grabbing it downstream, keeping it under the same condition (which also happens to be true only if we'd called do_dentry_open(), so for all other paths through the whole thing it's a no-op. 5/5) replace if (file->f_mode & FMODE_OPENED) path_get(&nd->path); terminate_walk(nd); with if (file->f_mode & FMODE_OPENED) { nd->path.mnt = NULL; nd->path.dentry = NULL; } terminate_walk(nd); Again, an obvious equivalent transformation.