Re: fs: NULL deref in atime_needs_update

From: Al Viro
Date: Fri Feb 19 2016 - 22:55:55 EST


On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 03:21:27AM +0000, Al Viro wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 08:32:10PM +0100, Dmitry Vyukov wrote:
> > > BUG: unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at 0000000000000050
>
> NULL inode->i_sb, by the look of the offset, but I really don't understand
> where the hell is that code doing (or how is that instruction going to
> generate dereferencing of 0x50, for that matter).

BTW, Mickaël's trace *does* make sense and it's definitely NULL inode->i_sb
(inode itself - in %rsi, inode->i_sb - in %rdx, offset of s_flags is 0x50,
the line in question is
if ((inode->i_sb->s_flags & MS_NODIRATIME) && S_ISDIR(inode->i_mode))

What I don't understand is what could possibly have NULL ->i_sb in *any*
instance of struct inode.