[PATCH] Fix of race in writeback_inodes()

This patch fixes race in writeback_inodes() described below:

writeback_inodes()
{
     ....
     sb->s_count++;
     spin_unlock(&sb_lock);
     ....
     spin_lock(&sb_lock);
     if (__put_super(sb))        <<< X
         goto restart;
     }
}

deactivate_super()
{
     fs->kill_sb(s);
         kill_block_super(sb)
             generic_shutdown_super(sb)
                     spin_lock(&sb_lock);
                     list_del(&sb->s_list);    <<< Y
                     spin_unlock(&sb_lock);
     ....
     put_super(s);
             spin_lock(&sb_lock);
             __put_super(sb);            <<< Z
             spin_unlock(&sb_lock);
}

The problem with it is that writeback_inodes() supposes that if
__put_super() returns 0 then no super block was deleted from the list and
we can safely traverse sb list further.

But as it is obvious from the deactivate_super() it's not actually true.
because at point Y we delete super block from the list and drop the lock.
We do __put_super() very much later...  So we can find sb with poisoned
sb->s_list at point X and we won't be the last sb reference holders.  The
last reference will be dropped in point Z.

So in case of the following sequence of execution Y -> X -> Z we'll get an
oops after point X in writeback_inodes().

This patch introduces __put_super_and_need_restart() function which allows
safe traversing of sb list.  I'll send a couple of patches later which
remove O(n^2) algos and using this function.

Signed-Off-By: Kirill Korotaev <dev@sw.ru>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>

0 files changed, 0 insertions, 0 deletions