Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> writes:

quoted text
> On Fri, 26 Sep 2008, Alexey Dobriyan wrote:
>>
>> Gentlemen, this happened while script was slowly rebuilding 300+ configs
>> sequentially. Very little recompling activity itself, much seeking.
>> 
>> This is first time I see this. No debugging was on, no preemption.

Consistent with the fact that is new code.

quoted text
>> Version: 2.6.27-rc7-c0f4d6d4b14a75a341d972ff73fb9740e1ceb634 +
>> 	atl1 fixlet + "notes" kobject fixlet, but they don't matter.
>> 
>> ffffffff802bc690 <proc_sys_compare>:
> ....
>> ffffffff802bc6c0: 75 dd jne ffffffff802bc69f <proc_sys_compare+0xf>
>> ffffffff802bc6c2:	49 8b 40 e0          	mov    -0x20(%r8),%rax
>> ffffffff802bc6c6: ===> 48 8b 78 f0 mov -0x10(%rax),%rdi <===
>> ffffffff802bc6ca: e8 71 96 f7 ff callq ffffffff80235d40 <sysctl_is_seen>
>
> That would be the
>
> 	sysctl_is_seen(PROC_I(dentry->d_inode)->sysctl)
>
> call, and it really looks like 'dentry->d_inode' is NULL:

Agreed.

quoted text
>> [16526.029537] BUG: unable to handle kernel paging request at fffffffffffffff0
>
> The whole PROC_I() thing just offsets from the inode:
>
> 	container_of(inode, struct proc_inode, vfs_inode);
>
> and 'sysctl' is indeed 16 bytes below the vfs inode on x86-64:
>
> 	struct proc_inode {
> 		...
> 	        struct ctl_table_header *sysctl;
> 	        struct ctl_table *sysctl_entry;
> 	        struct inode vfs_inode;
> 	};
>
> and as far as I can tell, there is nothing to say that a /proc inode 
> cannot be a negative dentry. Sure, we try to get rid of them, but during a 
> parallel lookup, we will have added the dentry with a NULL inode in the 
> other lookup.

Where is that? 

This is an issue because if we can get negative dentries the other
dentry operations are wrong as well.n

We hold the directory mutex in real_lookup
before calling i_op->lookup.  So lookups should be serialized.
proc_sys_lookup always either succeeds and calls d_add with
a valid inode or fails and returns an error code in which case
real_lookup puts the dentry before it is hashed.

We hold the directory mutex in readdir before calling
file->f_op->readdir.  Deep inside of proc_sys_readdir
proc_sys_fill_cache only adds the dentry if it has an inode.

do_revalidate doesn't look like it could get us there.
Nor does any of the paths that call ->d_delete.

It looks like don't free the inode from an non-negative
dentry until after it is unhashed.

So I'm totally stumped as to how we can get there.

quoted text
> So assuming that you have an inode at that point seems to be utter crap.

Clearly we don't have an inode there but I don't see we can end up with
a negative inode.

quoted text
> Now, the whole _function_ is utter crap and should probably be dropped, 
> but whatever. That's just another sysctl insanity. In the meantime, 
> something like this does look appropriate, no?

If we can't avoid negative dentries that looks appropriate.

But won't .d_revalidate and .d_delete be susceptible to the same
problem if we do have negative dentries?  

Eric
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