Currently watchers are removed in dentry_iput(), if n_link is zero. But other detries can be linked with this inode. For example if we create two hard links, open the first one and set an inotify watcher on one of them. Then if we remove the opened file and then another file, the inotify watcher will be removed. But we will have the alive file descriptor, which allows us to generate more events. And here is another behaviour, if files are removed in another order. The watcher will not be removed and we will keep getting inotify events for that inode. This patch removes difference of behaviours for these cases. Watchers are removed, only if nlink is zero and i_dentry list is empty. The resulting behaviour is the same with what has been described in the second case. Look at a following example: fd = inotify_init1(IN_NONBLOCK); deleted = open(path, O_CREAT | O_TRUNC | O_WRONLY, 0666); link(path, path_link); wd_deleted = inotify_add_watch(fd, path_link, IN_ALL_EVENTS); unlink(path); unlink(path_link); printf(" --- unlink path, path_link\n"); read_evetns(fd); close(deleted); printf(" --- close\n"); read_evetns(fd); printf(" --- end\n"); We expect to get the same set of events for this case and for the case, when files are deleted in another order. But now we get the different set of events. The first case, when "path" is deleted before "path_link" --- unlink path, path_link 4 (IN_ATTRIB) 400 (IN_DELETE_SELF) 8000 (IN_IGNORED) --- close --- end and for the case, when "path_link" is deleted before "path" --- unlink path_link, path 4 (IN_ATTRIB) --- close 8 (IN_CLOSE_WRITE) 400 (IN_DELETE_SELF) 8000 (IN_IGNORED) --- end With this patch we have the same output for both cases: --- unlink 4 (IN_ATTRIB) --- close 8 (IN_CLOSE_WRITE) 400 (IN_DELETE_SELF) 8000 (IN_IGNORED) --- end PASS So without the patch you don't receive some events if the file has at least 2 hardlinks and then gets unlinked. I think the risk that some application relies on *not* getting those events is pretty low (especially since in the common case of file without hardlinks you will get all those events). // Jan Kara In CRIU we are suffering from the current situation. We found this weird behaviour while been testing the results of restore of deleted files. When criu observes opened descriptor on deleted file its contents get written into criu image file which we call "ghost" files. On restore we create a temporary ghost file with some unique name. Then we restore file descriptors which were opened at the moment of checkpoint: we create a hardlink to this ghost file, then open it and this is done for every descriptor we need to recover. Then if there were a watch mark on the ghost file we restore them as well but at the end we need to do a cleanup and finally remove the ghost file itself which cause the problem. When we remove ghost file inode->n_link becomes 0 thus our restored inotify are dropped off by the kernel while here still opened files are floating around. I can't say that it's catastrophical but if there a chance to fix it on kernel level making events flow more sane, this would be just great, also our primary target is to make c/r process transparent to the userspace and without the patch i fear we can't reach it. // Cyrill Gorcunov and me. v2: generate IN_DELETE_SELF when the last link to the file is removed v3: expand the changelog Reviewed-by: Jan Kara <jack@xxxxxxx> Reviewed-by: Cyrill Gorcunov <gorcunov@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: "Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)" <mtk.manpages@xxxxxxxxx> Cc: Heinrich Schuchardt <xypron.debian@xxxxxx> Cc: Alexander Viro <viro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: John McCutchan <john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Robert Love <rlove@xxxxxxxxx> Cc: Eric Paris <eparis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Cyrill Gorcunov <gorcunov@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Pavel Emelyanov <xemul@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Andrey Vagin <avagin@xxxxxxxxxx> --- fs/dcache.c | 10 ++++++++-- 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/fs/dcache.c b/fs/dcache.c index 7a5b514..3a0e3bc 100644 --- a/fs/dcache.c +++ b/fs/dcache.c @@ -278,12 +278,15 @@ static void dentry_iput(struct dentry * dentry) __releases(dentry->d_inode->i_lock) { struct inode *inode = dentry->d_inode; + bool last_dentry; + if (inode) { dentry->d_inode = NULL; hlist_del_init(&dentry->d_alias); + last_dentry = hlist_empty(&inode->i_dentry); spin_unlock(&dentry->d_lock); spin_unlock(&inode->i_lock); - if (!inode->i_nlink) + if (!inode->i_nlink && last_dentry) fsnotify_inoderemove(inode); if (dentry->d_op && dentry->d_op->d_iput) dentry->d_op->d_iput(dentry, inode); @@ -303,13 +306,16 @@ static void dentry_unlink_inode(struct dentry * dentry) __releases(dentry->d_inode->i_lock) { struct inode *inode = dentry->d_inode; + bool last_dentry; + __d_clear_type(dentry); dentry->d_inode = NULL; hlist_del_init(&dentry->d_alias); dentry_rcuwalk_barrier(dentry); + last_dentry = hlist_empty(&inode->i_dentry); spin_unlock(&dentry->d_lock); spin_unlock(&inode->i_lock); - if (!inode->i_nlink) + if (!inode->i_nlink && last_dentry) fsnotify_inoderemove(inode); if (dentry->d_op && dentry->d_op->d_iput) dentry->d_op->d_iput(dentry, inode); -- 1.9.3 -- 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