On Sat, Jan 14, 2023 at 09:54:41AM +0800, Jia-Ju Bai wrote: > In a previous commit 2681631c2973, the parameter ni of > attr_load_runs_vcn() can be NULL, and thus a NULL check is added. > > However, in the same call stack, this variable is also dereferenced in > mi_read(): > > mi_read() > ni_lock(mft_ni); > attr_load_runs_vcn(mft_ni) > if (ni) -> Add a check by previous commit (ni is mft_ni) > ni_unlock(mft_ni); > > Thus, to avoid possible null-pointer dereferences, mft_ni should be > also checked in mi_read(). > > These results are reported by a static tool designed by myself No, it should not. ni_lock(mft_ni) is called only if rw_lock is not NULL. The only assignment of non-NULL to that variable is here: if (is_mounted(sbi)) { if (!is_mft) { rw_lock = &mft_ni->file.run_lock; down_read(rw_lock); } } Note that it would have already oopsed had mft_ni been NULL. The logics might or might not be wrong there, but could we please stop obfuscating it by checks piled higher and deeper just in case? Incidentally, I hope the pattern that triggered here is not f() checks for its argument being NULL, one of the callers of f() passes it a pointer therefore that pointer might be NULL for obvious reasons...