kernel/linux.git/fs/cachefiles/namei.c, branch linux-7.1.y

cachefiles: Fix error return when vfs_mkdir() fails

2026-05-15T13:32:43+00:00

When vfs_mkdir() fails, the error code is not extracted from the returned error pointer. This causes mkdir_error to be reached with ret=0, which leads to returning ERR_PTR(0) (NULL) instead of a proper error pointer. Fix this by extracting the error code from the error pointer when vfs_mkdir() fails. Fixes: 406fad7698f5 ("cachefiles: Fix oops in vfs_mkdir from cachefiles_get_directory") Signed-off-by: Hongling Zeng Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260513103406.202320-1-zenghongling@kylinos.cn Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner

Merge tag 'vfs-7.1-rc1.kino' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/vfs/vfs

2026-04-13T19:19:01+00:00

Pull vfs i_ino updates from Christian Brauner: "For historical reasons, the inode->i_ino field is an unsigned long, which means that it's 32 bits on 32 bit architectures. This has caused a number of filesystems to implement hacks to hash a 64-bit identifier into a 32-bit field, and deprives us of a universal identifier field for an inode. This changes the inode->i_ino field from an unsigned long to a u64. This shouldn't make any material difference on 64-bit hosts, but 32-bit hosts will see struct inode grow by at least 4 bytes. This could have effects on slabcache sizes and field alignment. The bulk of the changes are to format strings and tracepoints, since the kernel itself doesn't care that much about the i_ino field. The first patch changes some vfs function arguments, so check that one out carefully. With this change, we may be able to shrink some inode structures. For instance, struct nfs_inode has a fileid field that holds the 64-bit inode number. With this set of changes, that field could be eliminated. I'd rather leave that sort of cleanups for later just to keep this simple" * tag 'vfs-7.1-rc1.kino' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/vfs/vfs: nilfs2: fix 64-bit division operations in nilfs_bmap_find_target_in_group() EVM: add comment describing why ino field is still unsigned long vfs: remove externs from fs.h on functions modified by i_ino widening treewide: fix missed i_ino format specifier conversions ext4: fix signed format specifier in ext4_load_inode trace event treewide: change inode->i_ino from unsigned long to u64 nilfs2: widen trace event i_ino fields to u64 f2fs: widen trace event i_ino fields to u64 ext4: widen trace event i_ino fields to u64 zonefs: widen trace event i_ino fields to u64 hugetlbfs: widen trace event i_ino fields to u64 ext2: widen trace event i_ino fields to u64 cachefiles: widen trace event i_ino fields to u64 vfs: widen trace event i_ino fields to u64 net: change sock.sk_ino and sock_i_ino() to u64 audit: widen ino fields to u64 vfs: widen inode hash/lookup functions to u64

Merge tag 'vfs-7.1-rc1.directory' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/vfs/vfs

2026-04-13T17:24:33+00:00

Pull vfs directory updates from Christian Brauner: "Recently 'start_creating', 'start_removing', 'start_renaming' and related interfaces were added which combine the locking and the lookup. At that time many callers were changed to use the new interfaces. However there are still an assortment of places out side of the core vfs where the directory is locked explictly, whether with inode_lock() or lock_rename() or similar. These were missed in the first pass for an assortment of uninteresting reasons. This addresses the remaining places where explicit locking is used, and changes them to use the new interfaces, or otherwise removes the explicit locking. The biggest changes are in overlayfs. The other changes are quite simple, though maybe the cachefiles changes is the least simple of those" * tag 'vfs-7.1-rc1.directory' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/vfs/vfs: VFS: unexport lock_rename(), lock_rename_child(), unlock_rename() ovl: remove ovl_lock_rename_workdir() ovl: use is_subdir() for testing if one thing is a subdir of another ovl: change ovl_create_real() to get a new lock when re-opening created file. ovl: pass name buffer to ovl_start_creating_temp() cachefiles: change cachefiles_bury_object to use start_renaming_dentry() ovl: Simplify ovl_lookup_real_one() VFS: make lookup_one_qstr_excl() static. nfsd: switch purge_old() to use start_removing_noperm() selinux: Use simple_start_creating() / simple_done_creating() Apparmor: Use simple_start_creating() / simple_done_creating() libfs: change simple_done_creating() to use end_creating() VFS: move the start_dirop() kerndoc comment to before start_dirop() fs/proc: Don't lock root inode when creating "self" and "thread-self" VFS: note error returns in documentation for various lookup functions

cachefiles: fix incorrect dentry refcount in cachefiles_cull()

2026-03-31T09:52:08+00:00

The patch mentioned below changed cachefiles_bury_object() to expect 2 references to the 'rep' dentry. Three of the callers were changed to use start_removing_dentry() which takes an extra reference so in those cases the call gets the expected references. However there is another call to cachefiles_bury_object() in cachefiles_cull() which did not need to be changed to use start_removing_dentry() and so was not properly considered. It still passed the dentry with just one reference so the net result is that a reference is lost. To meet the expectations of cachefiles_bury_object(), cachefiles_cull() must take an extra reference before the call. It will be dropped by cachefiles_bury_object(). Reported-by: Marc Dionne Fixes: 7bb1eb45e43c ("VFS: introduce start_removing_dentry()") Signed-off-by: NeilBrown Link: https://patch.msgid.link/177456350181.1851489.16359967086642190170@noble.neil.brown.name Acked-by: Paulo Alcantara (Red Hat) Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner

cachefiles: change cachefiles_bury_object to use start_renaming_dentry()

2026-03-09T08:43:03+00:00

Rather then using lock_rename() and lookup_one() etc we can use the new start_renaming_dentry(). This is part of centralising dir locking and lookup so that locking rules can be changed. Some error check are removed as not necessary. Checks for rep being a non-dir or IS_DEADDIR and the check that ->graveyard is still a directory only provide slightly more informative errors and have been dropped. Reviewed-by: Jeff Layton Signed-off-by: NeilBrown Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260224222542.3458677-11-neilb@ownmail.net Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner

treewide: change inode->i_ino from unsigned long to u64

2026-03-06T13:31:28+00:00

On 32-bit architectures, unsigned long is only 32 bits wide, which causes 64-bit inode numbers to be silently truncated. Several filesystems (NFS, XFS, BTRFS, etc.) can generate inode numbers that exceed 32 bits, and this truncation can lead to inode number collisions and other subtle bugs on 32-bit systems. Change the type of inode->i_ino from unsigned long to u64 to ensure that inode numbers are always represented as 64-bit values regardless of architecture. Update all format specifiers treewide from %lu/%lx to %llu/%llx to match the new type, along with corresponding local variable types. This is the bulk treewide conversion. Earlier patches in this series handled trace events separately to allow trace field reordering for better struct packing on 32-bit. Signed-off-by: Jeff Layton Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260304-iino-u64-v3-12-2257ad83d372@kernel.org Acked-by: Damien Le Moal Reviewed-by: Christoph Hellwig Reviewed-by: Jan Kara Reviewed-by: Chuck Lever Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner

Merge tag 'vfs-6.19-rc1.directory.locking' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/vfs/vfs

2025-12-02T00:13:46+00:00

Pull directory locking updates from Christian Brauner: "This contains the work to add centralized APIs for directory locking operations. This series is part of a larger effort to change directory operation locking to allow multiple concurrent operations in a directory. The ultimate goal is to lock the target dentry(s) rather than the whole parent directory. To help with changing the locking protocol, this series centralizes locking and lookup in new helper functions. The helpers establish a pattern where it is the dentry that is being locked and unlocked (currently the lock is held on dentry->d_parent->d_inode, but that can change in the future). This also changes vfs_mkdir() to unlock the parent on failure, as well as dput()ing the dentry. This allows end_creating() to only require the target dentry (which may be IS_ERR() after vfs_mkdir()), not the parent" * tag 'vfs-6.19-rc1.directory.locking' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/vfs/vfs: nfsd: fix end_creating() conversion VFS: introduce end_creating_keep() VFS: change vfs_mkdir() to unlock on failure. ecryptfs: use new start_creating/start_removing APIs Add start_renaming_two_dentries() VFS/ovl/smb: introduce start_renaming_dentry() VFS/nfsd/ovl: introduce start_renaming() and end_renaming() VFS: add start_creating_killable() and start_removing_killable() VFS: introduce start_removing_dentry() smb/server: use end_removing_noperm for for target of smb2_create_link() VFS: introduce start_creating_noperm() and start_removing_noperm() VFS/nfsd/cachefiles/ovl: introduce start_removing() and end_removing() VFS/nfsd/cachefiles/ovl: add start_creating() and end_creating() VFS: tidy up do_unlinkat() VFS: introduce start_dirop() and end_dirop() debugfs: rename end_creating() to debugfs_end_creating()

VFS: introduce end_creating_keep()

2025-11-14T12:15:58+00:00

Occasionally the caller of end_creating() wants to keep using the dentry. Rather then requiring them to dget() the dentry (when not an error) before calling end_creating(), provide end_creating_keep() which does this. cachefiles and overlayfs make use of this. Reviewed-by: Amir Goldstein Reviewed-by: Jeff Layton Signed-off-by: NeilBrown Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20251113002050.676694-16-neilb@ownmail.net Tested-by: syzbot@syzkaller.appspotmail.com Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner

VFS: change vfs_mkdir() to unlock on failure.

2025-11-14T12:15:58+00:00

vfs_mkdir() already drops the reference to the dentry on failure but it leaves the parent locked. This complicates end_creating() which needs to unlock the parent even though the dentry is no longer available. If we change vfs_mkdir() to unlock on failure as well as releasing the dentry, we can remove the "parent" arg from end_creating() and simplify the rules for calling it. Note that cachefiles_get_directory() can choose to substitute an error instead of actually calling vfs_mkdir(), for fault injection. In that case it needs to call end_creating(), just as vfs_mkdir() now does on error. ovl_create_real() will now unlock on error. So the conditional end_creating() after the call is removed, and end_creating() is called internally on error. Reviewed-by: Amir Goldstein Reviewed-by: Jeff Layton Tested-by: syzbot@syzkaller.appspotmail.com Signed-off-by: NeilBrown Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20251113002050.676694-15-neilb@ownmail.net Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner

VFS: introduce start_removing_dentry()

2025-11-14T12:15:57+00:00

start_removing_dentry() is similar to start_removing() but instead of providing a name for lookup, the target dentry is given. start_removing_dentry() checks that the dentry is still hashed and in the parent, and if so it locks and increases the refcount so that end_removing() can be used to finish the operation. This is used in cachefiles, overlayfs, smb/server, and apparmor. There will be other users including ecryptfs. As start_removing_dentry() takes an extra reference to the dentry (to be put by end_removing()), there is no need to explicitly take an extra reference to stop d_delete() from using dentry_unlink_inode() to negate the dentry - as in cachefiles_delete_object(), and ksmbd_vfs_unlink(). cachefiles_bury_object() now gets an extra ref to the victim, which is drops. As it includes the needed end_removing() calls, the caller doesn't need them. Reviewed-by: Amir Goldstein Reviewed-by: Namjae Jeon Reviewed-by: Jeff Layton Signed-off-by: NeilBrown Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20251113002050.676694-9-neilb@ownmail.net Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner