The problem is not the Sparse warning, the problem is that this code is a mess. It used to very clearly buggy and I reported the bug. I think Arnd found the bug again independently and fixed it. A couple weeks ago Al Viro looked at this code. Here is his write up: https://www.spinics.net/lists/kernel/msg3952745.html It shouldn't take Al Viro dozens of pages of detailed analysis to try figure out if the code is safe or not. Your idea silences the warning but would make the code even more subtle and complicated. The right thing to do is to re-write the code to be simpler. regards, dan carpenter
