Miklos, I've implemented verification that lower root dir matches the origin file handle stored at upper root dir with the verify_lower mount option [1]. As you correctly noted, before we move on to verifying that upper dir 'belongs to' lower dir and that index dir 'belongs to' upper dir for the case of mounting not at the same time, we first need to cover the case of mount at the same time. This patch set provides protection against reuse of upperdir and workdir by two different overlay instances at the same time, e.g.: root@kvm-xfstests:~/unionmount-testsuite# mount -t overlay overlay on /mnt type overlay (rw,noatime,lowerdir=/lower,upperdir=/upper/0,workdir=/upper/work) root@kvm-xfstests:~/unionmount-testsuite# mount -t overlay overlay /backup/ -o rw,noatime,lowerdir=/lower,upperdir=/upper/0,workdir=/upper/work overlayfs: upperdir in-use by another overlay mount? mount: overlay is already mounted or /backup busy overlay is already mounted on /mnt root@kvm-xfstests:~/unionmount-testsuite# mkdir /upper/1 root@kvm-xfstests:~/unionmount-testsuite# mount -t overlay overlay /snapshot/ -o rw,noatime,lowerdir=/lower,upperdir=/upper/1,workdir=/upper/work overlayfs: workdir in-use by another overlay mount? mount: overlay is already mounted or /snapshot busy overlay is already mounted on /mnt It also provides protection against removal of workdir just after mount, which would have caused failures to copy up: root@kvm-xfstests:~/unionmount-testsuite# rmdir /upper/work/work/ rmdir: failed to remove '/upper/work/work/': Device or resource busy [1] https://github.com/amir73il/linux/commits/ovl-verify-dir Amir Goldstein (2): vfs: introduce inode 'inuse' lock ovl: get exclusive ownership on upper/work dirs fs/btrfs/ioctl.c | 3 +++ fs/inode.c | 40 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ fs/namei.c | 3 +++ fs/overlayfs/super.c | 70 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--- include/linux/fs.h | 16 ++++++++++++ 5 files changed, 129 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) -- 2.7.4 -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-unionfs" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html