netdev - Re: possible circular locking dependency detected

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Message-ID: <87d1kme10a.fsf@doppelsaurus.mobileactivedefense.com>
Date:   Fri, 2 Sep 2016 17:10:13 +0100
From:   Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@...eradapt.com>
To:     Al Viro <viro@...IV.linux.org.uk>
CC:     Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@...eradapt.com>,
        Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
        CAI Qian <caiqian@...hat.com>,
        Miklos Szeredi <miklos@...redi.hu>,
        Hannes Frederic Sowa <hannes@...essinduktion.org>,
        Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@...ileactivedefense.com>,
        Eric Sandeen <esandeen@...hat.com>,
        Network Development <netdev@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: possible circular locking dependency detected

Al Viro <viro@...IV.linux.org.uk> writes:
> On Fri, Sep 02, 2016 at 04:18:04PM +0100, Rainer Weikusat wrote:
>
>> As far as I can tell, this should work as I can't currently imagine
>> why a fs operation might end up binding a unix socket despite the
>> idea to make af_unix.c yet more complicated in order to work around
>> irregular behaviour of (as far as I can tell) a single filesystem
>> (for which kern_path_create doesn't really mean kern_path_create and
>> it has to work around that once it gets control) goes against all
>> instincts I have in this area. If filesystems need to do arbitrary
>> stuff when __sb_start_write is called for 'their' superblock, they
>> should be able to do so directly.
>
> Bullshit.  kern_path_create() *does* mean the same thing in all cases.
> Namely, find the parent, lock it and leave the final name component for
> the create-type operation.  It sure as hell is not guaranteed to take
> *all* locks that are going to be taken in process of mknod/mkdir/etc.
> Never had been.

This isn't about "all locks", it's about the lock in question. No other
mknod operation (I'm aware of) calls this with another superblock than
the one already acted upon by kern_path_create. This may be wrong (if
so, feel free to correct it) but it's not "bullshit" (intentional
deception in order to sell something to someone).