On Fri, Apr 18, 2014 at 02:57:50AM +0100, Al Viro wrote: > Where is it in do_last()? Hard to tell without even the hex dump of > oopsing code (and trying to reproduce it here hasn't produced any oopsen > so far). Hmm... Still no oopsen, but it looks like it *is* possible to get screwed there. RCU mode isn't a problem, AFAICS (we'll fail on d_seq mismatch in complete_walk() and that will be the end of it), but non-lazy mode *can* get buggered. We are holding a reference to nd->path.dentry and that's enough to prevent positive-to-negative transition, but negative-to-positive is fair game. So it does happen and we end up with nd->inode being set to NULL. And _that_ promptly blows up on if (!S_ISREG(nd->inode->i_mode)) will_truncate = false; Actually, it might very well be the only source of breakage - that late in the game (already out of RCU mode, for starters) we don't give a damn about nd->inode. Ah, actually there's also BUG_ON(inode != path->dentry->d_inode); in symlink case (similar "negative to positive", but it will be a symlink(2), not creat(2)). Pointless BUG_ON, actually... The reason why your reordering hadn't done any good is that CPU cache is free to reorder behind your back - no barriers between these two stores. I'd still like the disassembly of your do_last() and the missing hex dump... -- 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