1) in smack_sb_kern_mount() isp = inode->i_security; if (isp == NULL) inode->i_security = new_inode_smack(sp->smk_root); else isp->smk_inode = sp->smk_root; looks very fishy. How in hell had that inode managed to get created in the first place without going through smack_inode_alloc_security()? Is that about mounting an fs instance with in-core superblock that is older than the call of smack_init()? That shouldn't be possible due to initcall ordering, but if that's the case, just what would happen when we step on *other* inodes on the same fs? There's a bunch of places where smack assumes that ->i_security is never NULL... And if that's really impossible, WTF is that new_inode_smack() doing there? 2) again in smack_sb_kern_mount() spin_lock(&sp->smk_sblock); if (sp->smk_initialized != 0) { spin_unlock(&sp->smk_sblock); return 0; } sp->smk_initialized = 1; spin_unlock(&sp->smk_sblock); For one thing, security_sb_kern_mount() is serialized by sb->s_umount. For another, if it wouldn't be... this code wouldn't be able to prevent a race. Sure, only one of them will proceed to initialize the sucker. And another may cheerfully return before the work is actually done... In any case, it *is* serialized on per-superblock basis. 3) in smk_fill_super(), we have root_inode = sb->s_root->d_inode; root_inode->i_security = new_inode_smack(smack_known_floor.smk_known); Again, huh? This should be called after smack_init() had been done; hell, you explicitly say so in the comments: * Do not register smackfs if Smack wasn't enabled * on boot. We can not put this method normally under the * smack_init() code path since the security subsystem get * initialized before the vfs caches. Sounds like a misspelled assignment to ->smk_inode to me (and a leak, while we are at it)... -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-fsdevel" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html