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Change inode_operations.mkdir to return struct dentry *
Some filesystems, such as NFS, cifs, ceph, and fuse, do not have
complete control of sequencing on the actual filesystem (e.g. on a
different server) and may find that the inode created for a mkdir
request already exists in the icache and dcache by the time the mkdir
request returns. For example, if the filesystem is mounted twice the
directory could be visible on the other mount before it is on the
original mount, and a pair of name_to_handle_at(), open_by_handle_at()
calls could instantiate the directory inode with an IS_ROOT() dentry
before the first mkdir returns.
This means that the dentry passed to ->mkdir() may not be the one that
is associated with the inode after the ->mkdir() completes. Some
callers need to interact with the inode after the ->mkdir completes and
they currently need to perform a lookup in the (rare) case that the
dentry is no longer hashed.
This lookup-after-mkdir requires that the directory remains locked to
avoid races. Planned future patches to lock the dentry rather than the
directory will mean that this lookup cannot be performed atomically with
the mkdir.
To remove this barrier, this patch changes ->mkdir to return the
resulting dentry if it is different from the one passed in.
Possible returns are:
NULL - the directory was created and no other dentry was used
ERR_PTR() - an error occurred
non-NULL - this other dentry was spliced in
This patch only changes file-systems to return "ERR_PTR(err)" instead of
"err" or equivalent transformations. Subsequent patches will make
further changes to some file-systems to return a correct dentry.
Not all filesystems reliably result in a positive hashed dentry:
- NFS, cifs, hostfs will sometimes need to perform a lookup of
the name to get inode information. Races could result in this
returning something different. Note that this lookup is
non-atomic which is what we are trying to avoid. Placing the
lookup in filesystem code means it only happens when the filesystem
has no other option.
- kernfs and tracefs leave the dentry negative and the ->revalidate
operation ensures that lookup will be called to correctly populate
the dentry. This could be fixed but I don't think it is important
to any of the users of vfs_mkdir() which look at the dentry.
The recommendation to use
d_drop();d_splice_alias()
is ugly but fits with current practice. A planned future patch will
change this.
Reviewed-by: 
Jeff Layton <jlayton@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: 
Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
Signed-off-by: 
NeilBrown <neilb@suse.de>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20250227013949.536172-2-neilb@suse.de
Signed-off-by: 
Christian Brauner <brauner@kernel.org>