kernel/linux.git/Documentation/filesystems/locking.rst, branch v7.0.10

Merge tag 'vfs-7.0-rc1.namespace' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/vfs/vfs

2026-02-09T22:43:47+00:00

Pull vfs mount updates from Christian Brauner: - statmount: accept fd as a parameter Extend struct mnt_id_req with a file descriptor field and a new STATMOUNT_BY_FD flag. When set, statmount() returns mount information for the mount the fd resides on — including detached mounts (unmounted via umount2(MNT_DETACH)). For detached mounts the STATMOUNT_MNT_POINT and STATMOUNT_MNT_NS_ID mask bits are cleared since neither is meaningful. The capability check is skipped for STATMOUNT_BY_FD since holding an fd already implies prior access to the mount and equivalent information is available through fstatfs() and /proc/pid/mountinfo without privilege. Includes comprehensive selftests covering both attached and detached mount cases. - fs: Remove internal old mount API code (1 patch) Now that every in-tree filesystem has been converted to the new mount API, remove all the legacy shim code in fs_context.c that handled unconverted filesystems. This deletes ~280 lines including legacy_init_fs_context(), the legacy_fs_context struct, and associated wrappers. The mount(2) syscall path for userspace remains untouched. Documentation references to the legacy callbacks are cleaned up. - mount: add OPEN_TREE_NAMESPACE to open_tree() Container runtimes currently use CLONE_NEWNS to copy the caller's entire mount namespace — only to then pivot_root() and recursively unmount everything they just copied. With large mount tables and thousands of parallel container launches this creates significant contention on the namespace semaphore. OPEN_TREE_NAMESPACE copies only the specified mount tree (like OPEN_TREE_CLONE) but returns a mount namespace fd instead of a detached mount fd. The new namespace contains the copied tree mounted on top of a clone of the real rootfs. This functions as a combined unshare(CLONE_NEWNS) + pivot_root() in a single syscall. Works with user namespaces: an unshare(CLONE_NEWUSER) followed by OPEN_TREE_NAMESPACE creates a mount namespace owned by the new user namespace. Mount namespace file mounts are excluded from the copy to prevent cycles. Includes ~1000 lines of selftests" * tag 'vfs-7.0-rc1.namespace' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/vfs/vfs: selftests/open_tree: add OPEN_TREE_NAMESPACE tests mount: add OPEN_TREE_NAMESPACE fs: Remove internal old mount API code selftests: statmount: tests for STATMOUNT_BY_FD statmount: accept fd as a parameter statmount: permission check should return EPERM

Merge tag 'vfs-7.0-rc1.nonblocking_timestamps' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/vfs/vfs

2026-02-09T19:25:01+00:00

Pull vfs timestamp updates from Christian Brauner: "This contains the changes to support non-blocking timestamp updates. Since commit 66fa3cedf16a ("fs: Add async write file modification handling") file_update_time_flags() unconditionally returns -EAGAIN when any timestamp needs updating and IOCB_NOWAIT is set. This makes non-blocking direct writes impossible on file systems with granular enough timestamps, which in practice means all of them. This reworks the timestamp update path to propagate IOCB_NOWAIT through ->update_time so that file systems which can update timestamps without blocking are no longer penalized. With that groundwork in place, the core change passes IOCB_NOWAIT into ->update_time and returns -EAGAIN only when the file system indicates it would block. XFS implements non-blocking timestamp updates by using the new ->sync_lazytime and open-coding generic_update_time without the S_NOWAIT check, since the lazytime path through the generic helpers can never block in XFS" * tag 'vfs-7.0-rc1.nonblocking_timestamps' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/vfs/vfs: xfs: enable non-blocking timestamp updates xfs: implement ->sync_lazytime fs: refactor file_update_time_flags fs: add support for non-blocking timestamp updates fs: add a ->sync_lazytime method fs: factor out a sync_lazytime helper fs: refactor ->update_time handling fat: cleanup the flags for fat_truncate_time nfs: split nfs_update_timestamps fs: allow error returns from generic_update_time fs: remove inode_update_time

fs: add a ->sync_lazytime method

2026-01-12T13:01:33+00:00

Allow the file system to explicitly implement lazytime syncing instead of pigging back on generic inode dirtying. This allows to simplify the XFS implementation and prepares for non-blocking lazytime timestamp updates. Signed-off-by: Christoph Hellwig Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260108141934.2052404-8-hch@lst.de Reviewed-by: Chaitanya Kulkarni Reviewed-by: Jeff Layton Reviewed-by: Jan Kara Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner

fs: refactor ->update_time handling

2026-01-12T13:01:32+00:00

Pass the type of update (atime vs c/mtime plus version) as an enum instead of a set of flags that caused all kinds of confusion. Because inode_update_timestamps now can't return a modified version of those flags, return the I_DIRTY_* flags needed to persist the update, which is what the main caller in generic_update_time wants anyway, and which is suitable for the other callers that only want to know if an update happened. The whole update_time path keeps the flags argument, which will be used to support non-blocking updates soon even if it is unused, and (the slightly renamed) inode_update_time also gains the possibility to return a negative errno to support this. Signed-off-by: Christoph Hellwig Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260108141934.2052404-6-hch@lst.de Reviewed-by: Jan Kara Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner

filelock: allow lease_managers to dictate what qualifies as a conflict

2025-12-15T14:20:33+00:00

Requesting a delegation on a file from the userland fcntl() interface currently succeeds when there are conflicting opens present. This is because the lease handling code ignores conflicting opens for FL_LAYOUT and FL_DELEG leases. This was a hack put in place long ago, because nfsd already checks for conflicts in its own way. The kernel needs to perform this check for userland delegations the same way it is done for leases, however. Make this dependent on the lease_manager by adding a new ->lm_open_conflict() lease_manager operation and have generic_add_lease() call that instead of check_conflicting_open(). Morph check_conflicting_open() into a ->lm_open_conflict() op that is only called for userland leases/delegations. Set the ->lm_open_conflict() operations for nfsd to trivial functions that always return 0. Reviewed-by: Chuck Lever Signed-off-by: Jeff Layton Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20251204-dir-deleg-ro-v2-2-22d37f92ce2c@kernel.org Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner

fs: Remove internal old mount API code

2025-12-15T13:48:33+00:00

Now that the last in-tree filesystem has been converted to the new mount API, remove all legacy mount API code designed to handle un-converted filesystems, and remove associated documentation as well. (The code to handle the legacy mount(2) syscall from userspace is still in place, of course.) Tested with an allmodconfig build on x86_64, and a sanity check of an old mount(2) syscall mount. Signed-off-by: Eric Sandeen Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20251212174403.2882183-1-sandeen@redhat.com Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner

block: switch ->getgeo() to struct gendisk

2025-08-13T06:59:29+00:00

Instances are happier that way and it makes more sense anyway - the only part of the result that is related to partition we are given is the start sector, and that has been filled in by the caller. Everything else is a function of the disk. Only one instance (DASD) is ever looking at anything other than bdev->bd_disk and that one is trivial to adjust. Reviewed-by: Martin K. Petersen Reviewed-by: Christoph Hellwig Acked-by: Jens Axboe Signed-off-by: Al Viro

Merge tag 'vfs-6.17-rc1.fileattr' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/vfs/vfs

2025-07-28T22:24:14+00:00

Pull fileattr updates from Christian Brauner: "This introduces the new file_getattr() and file_setattr() system calls after lengthy discussions. Both system calls serve as successors and extensible companions to the FS_IOC_FSGETXATTR and FS_IOC_FSSETXATTR system calls which have started to show their age in addition to being named in a way that makes it easy to conflate them with extended attribute related operations. These syscalls allow userspace to set filesystem inode attributes on special files. One of the usage examples is the XFS quota projects. XFS has project quotas which could be attached to a directory. All new inodes in these directories inherit project ID set on parent directory. The project is created from userspace by opening and calling FS_IOC_FSSETXATTR on each inode. This is not possible for special files such as FIFO, SOCK, BLK etc. Therefore, some inodes are left with empty project ID. Those inodes then are not shown in the quota accounting but still exist in the directory. This is not critical but in the case when special files are created in the directory with already existing project quota, these new inodes inherit extended attributes. This creates a mix of special files with and without attributes. Moreover, special files with attributes don't have a possibility to become clear or change the attributes. This, in turn, prevents userspace from re-creating quota project on these existing files. In addition, these new system calls allow the implementation of additional attributes that we couldn't or didn't want to fit into the legacy ioctls anymore" * tag 'vfs-6.17-rc1.fileattr' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/vfs/vfs: fs: tighten a sanity check in file_attr_to_fileattr() tree-wide: s/struct fileattr/struct file_kattr/g fs: introduce file_getattr and file_setattr syscalls fs: prepare for extending file_get/setattr() fs: make vfs_fileattr_[get|set] return -EOPNOTSUPP selinux: implement inode_file_[g|s]etattr hooks lsm: introduce new hooks for setting/getting inode fsxattr fs: split fileattr related helpers into separate file

fs: change write_begin/write_end interface to take struct kiocb *

2025-07-16T12:48:18+00:00

Change the address_space_operations callbacks write_begin() and write_end() to take struct kiocb * as the first argument instead of struct file *. Update all affected function prototypes, implementations, call sites, and related documentation across VFS, filesystems, and block layer. Part of a series refactoring address_space_operations write_begin and write_end callbacks to use struct kiocb for passing write context and flags. Signed-off-by: Taotao Chen Link: https://lore.kernel.org/20250716093559.217344-4-chentaotao@didiglobal.com Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner

tree-wide: s/struct fileattr/struct file_kattr/g

2025-07-04T14:14:39+00:00

Now that we expose struct file_attr as our uapi struct rename all the internal struct to struct file_kattr to clearly communicate that it is a kernel internal struct. This is similar to struct mount_{k}attr and others. Link: https://lore.kernel.org/20250703-restlaufzeit-baurecht-9ed44552b481@brauner Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner